


Prisoner

by rainoverthemountains



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Autistic Entrapta (She-Ra), Chronic Illness, F/M, Gen, Horde-typical ableism, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, although she's a little bit missing right now, honestly no one's trying to be an asshole, non-consensual removal of mobility aids, they don't know that's what they're doing but the effect is the same, they just don't know the scary spacebat can be hurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24859798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainoverthemountains/pseuds/rainoverthemountains
Summary: The raid on the Fright Zone was a resounding success. They got Adora back. They got the sword back. Nobody managed to open any reality-destroying portals. And somehow, amid all the chaos, thrown lab equipment, and pieces of ceiling raining down on their heads, they got Hordak. Now Hordak is in the spare room. Hordak. What in the world are they supposed to do with him?He’s a surprisingly cooperative prisoner – except for that thing about the armor. They couldn’t exactly let him keep it, could they? And that thing about Entrapta. It’s just best not to mention Entrapta.
Relationships: Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Hordak & Best Friends Squad, Hordak & Imp (She-Ra), Hordak & Princess Alliance, Hordak & Scorpia (She-Ra)
Comments: 339
Kudos: 486





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in season three, but all five seasons are fair game for spoilers, as well as many headcanons from tumblr.

“Adora!” Bow cries as pieces of an exploding vat slam into the pipe thing she's tied to, knocking it over and throwing her to the ground.

“I’m okay!” she calls back. The pipe thing didn't squish her, at least, even if there's a little more green slime in her hair than she'd like. Also, the pipe thing is broken now, and the glowing rope thing between her arms isn’t that tight, so if she just shimmies along a little bit further… “Yes!” She yanks the rope past the end of the pipe. She’s free! Kind of. Shaking the ache out of her arms, she stumbles toward the sword.

“Oh no you don’t!” Catra yells, lunging for her. They grapple a few feet from the portal machine, Catra taking advantage of not having a rope thing on her arms while Adora tries to use the rope thing as some kind of weapon. At least Catra gets green slime in her hair, too.

-

On the other side of the room, Hordak is dealing with the debris blocking him from the portal machine by throwing it all in the general direction of Glimmer and Shadow Weaver, who deal with _that_ by throwing those same debris at random parts of the lab, knocking even more debris on their heads, which gives Hordak even more things to throw. From Bow’s view atop a pile of crushed metal, it looks not so much like he's actually trying to hit anyone as like he just wants to throw things. “At this rate he might just break his own portal machine. Maybe we should just wait,” he mutters, before ducking to avoid a block of metal several times his size. “Or maybe we'll all get smashed into pancakes!”

Okay, enough wondering about Hordak's anger issues. Someone needs to end this, fast. Catra’s got a glowing green rope thing around Adora’s neck, Hordak just got reminded that he’s meant to be throwing things _at_ someone by Glimmer and Shadow Weaver actually managing to hit him, and Adora’s sword is hovering in the portal machine, just waiting for Catra to remember that her goal is opening the portal, not strangling Adora.

Target, target, he needs a target! There are too many targets! Really bad targets, and also Hordak can catch his arrows out of the air, and also Catra just dropped Adora and is running to the portal switch – okay, okay, um… rope arrow! Rope arrow to Catra! He ducks one more projectile, aims, fires, and has a moment of relief when the arrow strikes true. Then he barely avoids a plate-sized piece of broken glass trying to take off his head. Worst invasion ever.

-

Hordak roars as he throws another piece of his destroyed sanctum at the invaders. They dare break in here to ruin everything he’s worked for these many years, trapped on this backwater world?! They dare interrupt the culmination of all his work with Entrapta?! ~~‘ _Who do you think let the princesses in?_~~ _’_ No! He will _destroy_ them!

Piles of debris stand between him and the switch. For every piece he throws out of the way, the invaders drop five more down on his head. But it doesn’t matter! He _will_ reach the switch, he _will_ open the portal, ~~Entrapta’s portal~~ , no, _his_ portal, to invite Horde Prime to bring his glorious reign to this pathetic planet. Prime will see what he has done, how he has conquered, how he has brought this world into Prime’s light, how he has remained loyal despite this world’s pathetic attempts at distractions! ~~He liked this last distraction.~~ Lies! All of it was based on lies, as are all things that try to contradict the words of Prime! Hordak was weak, and foolish, and far too easily drawn in by false comfort, false excuses for his pathetic state, but no more! He will open that portal, and he will go _home!_

Several tons of metal slamming into his chest interrupt his mental rant, knocking him to the floor, sending agony blazing across his nerves as the chest plate slams into his ports. No, _no, NO!_ He will not be defeated! These primitive princesses will not keep him from returning to Prime’s light, from proving himself worthy, more than a defect to be discarded! The portal will open!

Ignoring the pain, as he has so often since this useless body began breaking down, he pushes the scrap off his chest and returns it with force to the ones who threw it in the first place. He will be victorious!

He steps forward, and falls face down on the ground. _NO!_ He must reach the portal. ~~It’s all that’s left for him after Entrapta-~~ It’s what he always intended to do and he will do it! He will do it if he has to crawl there! Which is exactly what he does. He will make it. He must. There's time. But no, the ex-Force Captain is there! She’s too close! She’ll take the sword! No!

Catra gets her before she can. Not very well, given that she’s wrapped in ropes herself, but she has Adora on the ground and has nearly made it to the switch– _NO!_ Thrice-damned princesses, farthest creatures from Prime’s light! The small one has arrived, with her ability to control ice, which she’s now using to trap Catra, because what are princesses for if not to ruin every plan he makes with their conniving and deception ~~which has nothing to do with ice or this particular princess; maybe he’s projecting something~~ _Prime damn all princesses!_

Never mind, it doesn’t matter. He’s almost made it. Just a few feet more, and Prime will deal with all these princesses, nevermore to ruin his plans ~~and what do you think big brother will do to Entrapta?~~ It doesn’t matter, because Entrapta is a traitor. She betrayed him, she… she… _~~‘imperfections are beautiful~~_ ~~’~~ Lies! Obvious lies that he should have known better than to believe. Just one more sign of how far he has fallen, how badly he needs to return to Prime’s purifying light! ~~Conquered worlds are purified of all rebellion~~ as they should be! This world needs purification nearly as much as Hordak does! _All beings must suffer to become pure!_ ~~Has he not suffered enough?~~ Clearly _not,_ because he’s as far from pure as these traitorous creatures! ~~But what will happen to Entrapta?~~ It doesn’t matter! Just pull the switch! It's right there!

-

Glimmer is going to faint. She’s going to pass out right here if Shadow Weaver ‘helps’ her with one more spell. She knows it. Any second now. Thankfully, they’ve had a break from throwing around giant machines, now that Mermista, Perfuma, and Frosta have arrived. Frosta froze Catra, and now all three of them are focusing on keeping pieces of the ceiling off their heads.

Adora doesn’t look too good, but she’s going for the sword. She’s almost got it! Some kind of electricity field thing tries to keep her away from it, but she pushes through. "Come on, Adora!" Just a little more… she’s got it! Both hands wrapped around the hilt, she yanks on the sword. But it won’t move! Oh no, oh no, oh no!

“Shadow Weaver!”

“What?” Shadow Weaver snaps.

“Adora! She can’t get the sword!”

“What? Agh. It must be held in the field generated by the machine!”

“What do we do?!”

“Perhaps if she were to–”

Glimmer's heart drops through the floor. “Hordak!”

“What about him? Quiet, girl, I need to think–”

“No, Hordak's at the switch!” He’s kneeling next to it, not pulling it yet, but he’s right there!

“What?! Oh, that won’t do.” Draining more power that Glimmer _doesn’t have to spare_ , thank you very much, Shadow Weaver shoots electricity at Hordak. He and Glimmer both scream. Glimmer catches herself on Shadow Weaver's shoulder. Hordak fall into Adora, who falls into the portal machine, which shocks them both but knocks the sword out of its field.

“I’m fine!” Adora slurs, waving the sword above her head. The machine powers down.

“Great, get over here!” Mermista shouts, dragging Perfuma towards Glimmer and Bow. Frosta stops to help Adora disentangle herself from the machine, before they both run to join the others.

“Can we get out of here now?” Perfuma asks, warily holding a shield of vines between them and the ceiling, just in case.

“Yeah, just-” Glimmer braces herself for the power drain, but none comes. “Wait, where’s Shadow Weaver?”

“Over here!” Shadow Weaver calls from beside the machine. The group rushes to join her. 

“What’s wrong?” Glimmer asks, dreading whatever new problem she’s found.

“Nothing at the moment, but I expect that several new problems will be arriving very soon.”

“Then why did you–?”

“We’d best leave now, before their forces regroup.”

“Yeah, scary lady," Mermista grumbles, "that’s what we were trying to do over there, but sure, over here is definitely better,” That earns many corresponding grumbles of agreement, but they all gather close to Glimmer. Once again, Glimmer gathers her strength, visions of falling into bed and sleeping for days filling her mind and driving her forward.

“One last teleport, and you’ll be home,” Shadow Weaver encourages that thought, hopefully not through reading her mind or something, but at this point, who cares?

“Okay, I can do this!” Glimmer declares, putting every bit of magic she’s gathered into one last effort. Catching Shadow Weaver, who for some reason decided this was the time to pick something up off the floor, Glimmer takes them home.

-

Scorpia is very confused. She would be the first to admit that clever reasoning and tricky plans aren’t her strong suit. She’s more the muscle than the planner, and she’s perfectly fine with that. She’s got friends to do the smart people stuff. Her job is to back them up and be there for them, no matter what. Which is the problem she’s having right now.

Catra is her friend. Catra wants to help Lord Hordak open a portal. That kind of seems like a bad idea because of the whole ‘destroying the world’ thing, but it’s obviously very important to Catra, and what does Scorpia know about portals, anyway? Her job as a good friend is to support Catra, who's clearly having a hard time right now. Except that Entrapta is also her friend, and she thought she was Catra’s friend too, but friends don’t usually electrocute each other, do they? And Entrapta, who is also good at smart people stuff, seemed pretty sure about the ‘portal destroying the world’ thing, which everyone should probably agree is bad. Also, when someone electrocutes your friend and sends her to Beast Island, a good friend should probably do something about that. But that would require being a bad friend to Catra, who clearly needs a friend, and is also being kind of scary with the whole electrocuting people thing. Would a good friend threaten to electrocute Scorpia? No, but Catra is still her friend. Scorpia is very confused.

“Ugh, I just don’t know!” she says, wishing she could talk it out with her friends, but of course she can’t, because they’re the source of the problem. Well, actually, Entrapta probably didn’t mean to get electrocuted, so it’s not really her fault, but she isn’t really here to talk to anymore, is she? Which just makes Scorpia feel worse, and like she maybe shouldn’t be so conflicted about this, but she is! Why did any of this have to happen? Why couldn’t they just–?

The walls shake, knocking paneling loose from the ceiling. Ducking down and covering her head, Scorpia waits for the shaking to stop. It doesn’t. It gets worse. It sounds like the whole building might come down on top of her. “Better go find out what’s happening.” At least it’s a distraction from her friendship problems.

The sounds of destruction lead her right to the hallway outside Hordak’s sanctum, although the sounds themselves have stopped by the time she gets there. Passing through the shattered doorway into the ruins of what was already a pretty weird place before it was filled with machine parts and broken glass, she arrives just in time to see Lord Hordak on the floor surrounded by the whole invading army of princesses and Lord Hordak’s old second in command. The invaders all huddle together. Dark reddish, sparkly magic covers their bodies. At the last second, Shadow Weaver reaches down to the ground to grab something. Then all of them are gone, including Lord Hordak.

“Oh, that is _not_ good,” she declares as she picks her way across the debris to rescue a furious, ice-encased Catra.


	2. Chapter 2

Glimmer stumbles into Shadow Weaver at the end of the teleport.

“I am _done_ teleporting. Done. You are going back to your cell, and I’m going to my room, and I’m not coming out for at least three days, maybe a week. Mom’s going to be mad, but I don’t care, because we’ve – what is that?”

Releasing the armored hand she was holding, Shadow Weaver straightens and casts Glimmer a disdainful look. “That, child, is Hordak. Clearly. Have you taken leave of all of your senses, in addition to your sense of balance?”

“I – you drained all my power! It’s not my fault that – never mind. I can see that that’s Hordak. Why is he _here?_ ”

“He is here because you brought him here.”

“I didn’t! Why would I bring Hordak to Bright Moon?”

“You did. With a small amount of assistance from me, of course.”

 _“Why?!_ Why would you want Hordak in Bright Moon?!”

“Yeah, evil dark magic lady,” Frosta says, smacking her fist into her palm, “why would you bring your old boss here? Unless this is some kind of secret plot to take over?”

“It does seem just a tiny bit suspicious,” Perfuma agrees, wringing her hands.

“Nonsense. If this was a plan to infiltrate Bright Moon, why would I want Hordak injured and unconscious?”

Mermista rolls her eyes. “Oh, geez, I don’t know, maybe so we’d let our guards down so you could do whatever you want?”

“And then when we aren’t watching you can just heal him and then you can sneak into our rooms and murder us while we sleep!” Frosta mimes stabbing someone, and then punching them for good measure.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Shadow Weaver scoffs.

“Is that ridiculous?” Adora asks, leaning on Bow, still looking a little bit out of it from falling through the portal machine. “Because it doesn’t really sound ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Bow says. “That does kind of sound exactly like what Hordak’s former second in command _would_ say after tricking Glimmer into taking Hordak past all of our defenses and – uh, Glimmer?”

“Hmm?” Glimmer is fine. She’s totally fine, and totally ready to deal with suddenly having Hordak in Bright Moon. Everything’s fine.

“Glimmer, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m… everything’s fine. This is fine. Hordak’s in Bright Moon, and that’s fine, we can totally handle that. That’s totally not a really bad thing that mom’s going to be even more mad about than me going behind her back to–”

“Ahh! He moved!” Perfuma shrieks.

“Ahh!” Glimmer shrieks too, but she definitely doesn’t jump back because this is fine, she can handle this, it’s fine– “Ahh!” His hand twitched! No, this is not okay. Nothing’s okay. Hordak’s in Bright Moon, and it’s all Glimmer’s fault! “What do we do?! What do we do?! What do we do?! Mom’s going to kill me! Or ground me for life! She was already going to ground me for life! What do we do?!”

Shadow Weaver scoffs, pulling more of Glimmer’s power to casually toss a spell Hordak’s way. “Fool! Just think for a moment. Do you really think your mother will object to the capture of the enemy she has been fighting for decades? The one who killed your father?” Glimmer flinches. “We have won a resounding victory today. Now quit all this childish nonsense about getting in trouble, and bring our prisoner to your queen.” With that, Shadow Weaver walks off.

“So… is she officially not a prisoner anymore, or…?” Bow mumbles.

“Umm…” Glimmer looks down at the now motionless Hordak. “Maybe… maybe we should figure out what to do with him first?”

They all look at each other in trepidation. No one is very forthcoming with ideas about what to do with the unconscious lord of the Horde in Bright Moon, probably because it’s _Hordak_ in _Bright Moon_.

“Maybe we should lock him up?” Adora suggests.

“Where?” Glimmer asks. “We only have one prison cell.”

“Actually, we kind of have less than one prison cell…” Adora mumbles.

“It’s a prison cell!” Glimmer shouts, immediately feeling kind of bad about it. None of this is Adora's fault. “Sorry. I just really need some helpful suggestions, here, not arguments. We have one _prison cell_ , but it’s busy holding Shadow Weaver–”

“Oh, yeah, scary magic lady looked very imprisoned when she insulted you and walked away,” Mermista drawls. “Do we actually have any idea where she went?”

“No, but – we’ll deal with that later! Right now, we need to focus on Hordak. Can anyone _please_ come up with some idea about what to do with Hordak?”

“Shouldn’t we take him to your mom?” Bow asks.

“Well… yeah, I mean, we probably should, but… ugh, she’s going to kill me!”

“Not… necessarily,” Bow says, trying to look reassuring. “I mean, like Shadow Weaver said, this is kind of a good thing? It would have been nice if she’d bothered to tell us she was bringing Hordak with us, so we could maybe have had some kind of a plan, but since he’s already here, I mean… it’s not _bad_ to capture our enemy’s leader?”

“Right!” Frosta shouts, fist in the air. “We’ve caught the evil bad guy and now we can interrogate him to find out all his evil plans!”

“Um, so… how, exactly, do we interrogate the leader of the Horde?” Perfuma asks.

“We punch him in the face!” Frosta looms threateningly over the form sprawled at their feet, presenting an image that… isn’t nearly as satisfying as Glimmer would have thought it would be.

For the first time, Glimmer really looks at the evil menace they’ve captured, ignoring Frosta’s complaints as vines pull her back towards Perfuma. Somehow, he just doesn’t look all that menacing right now. It’s probably mainly the whole ‘being unconscious’ thing, and maybe a little bit the dents in his armor, and is that a bruise on his face? And…

“He has floppy _ears!”_ Bow whispers in barely contained glee. And it’s true. Looking at Hordak’s ears has never been a priority on the rare occasions any of them have seen him, but now, drooped down like they are, with the glowing red eyes closed and just one little fang sticking out between his lips… “Somebody help me,” Bow begs, lip wavering. “Someone remind me why Hordak isn’t adorable.”

Glimmer’s not going to be able to help with that at the moment. Neither is Adora, judging by the bewildered smile on her face. Perfuma and Frosta are both busy staring at Hordak with wide eyes. Mermista, on the other hand…

“Uh, how about the fact that he’s definitely going kill us all the second he wakes up if we keep standing around talking instead of locking him up?”

“Okay, so that maybe helps a little bit," Bow says. "But the ears…”

“Forget the ears.” Glimmer sighs. Not that she’s having an easy time forgetting them, either, but _priorities_. “I guess the best thing to do really is to bring him to mom. We can deal with… interrogation, or whatever, later.”

“I guess I _would_ feel kind of bad punching him in the face right this second,” Frosta admits, prompting Perfuma to finally release her from the vines. “Let’s take him to Queen Angella before he wakes up and causes problems.”

“Okay. Okay, this is fine. Mom can’t be too mad. We got everyone home safe, and we even got a prisoner. It’s fine. Let’s go.” Glimmer braces herself for another teleport, but, “Ow!”

“What’s wrong?!” Way too many people ask at once, which Glimmer might appreciate more if she hadn’t just given herself a headache.

“I don’t think I can teleport any more,” she whimpers. “At least not until I recharge.”

Bow pats her shoulder. “That’s alright, we’ll just walk.”

“And carry Hordak?” _Why_ did Shadow Weaver have to use Glimmer’s magic for every single spell they did today? Doesn’t she have any magic of her own? Glimmer wants to go to bed.

“Sure! He’s only, uh… eight feet tall and covered in armor! How hard can it be?”

“We could take his armor off,” Adora suggests hesitantly.

“Ew, no!” Frosta cringes. “What if he’s not wearing anything underneath it?”

“Pretty sure he is,” Mermista says, bunching the fabric draped over his legs in her hand. “This part’s not armor.”

“No way to know if it’s attached to the top, though,” Bow says. “Hey, Adora, did you ever see Hordak take his armor off, back when you were in the Horde?”

Adora shakes her head emphatically. “Definitely not. I don’t think even Shadow Weaver ever saw L – Hordak without his armor. There were stories about people who made the mistake of going into the most private part of his sanctum to try to see, but as soon as they saw him, the big machines back there ripped them apart!”

Frosta scowls. “Wait, if anyone who went back there got ripped apart by machines, how did anyone survive to tell you why no one survived?”

“Ripped apart, I tell you!” Adora insists.

Glimmer sighs, rubbing her forehead. “Okay, so, no one sneak into the most private part of Hordak’s sanctum thingy. Got it. We still need to take Hordak to my mom. Are we doing that with or without the armor?”

“Maybe we can take pieces off without removing the whole thing?” Bow bends down to inspect an arm piece. “A lot of these look like they should come apart.” He tugs lightly at the elbow joint, then more firmly. It doesn’t budge.

“Hey, maybe She-Ra can do it,” Adora suggests, raising her sword. “For the honor of Grayskull!”

“We probably should have had She-Ra around this whole time, anyway,” Perfuma says as Adora transforms, which, yes, there are a lot of things they probably should have been doing, but, once again, no one was really quite prepared to have _Hordak_ in _Bright Moon_.

She-Ra lifts one of Hordak’s arms to examine it. “It’s like a glove, right?” She lightly tugs on it, but it doesn’t move. “It looks like it should pull right off. Or maybe one of these panel thingies comes apart?”

She digs her fingers into a gap near the elbow, and pulls, then pulls harder. The metal creaks. She digs the fingers of her other hand into the other side of his arm, back to the glove approach. It pulls away slightly. Hordak screams.

Adora drops his arm, everyone else jumping away with startled yelps as Hordak snarls. He lunges at Adora, swiping at her with the arm that isn’t curled sparking against his chest. Panicking, Adora knocks him over the head with her sword. He collapses, and doesn’t move again.

“So, um…” Adora nudges him with her toe, then crouches down beside him when he doesn’t react, “maybe the armor should stay on, for now?”

Five heads nod in emphatic agreement.

Bringing Hordak to the queen turns out to be easier than expected, once they realize that Adora can carry him, even with the armor. An eight foot tall woman carrying an eight foot tall… whatever Hordak is, might look a little ridiculous, but it works.

Glimmer steels herself at the entrance to the throne room, then turns back to her friends. “Stay here for now, okay?”

“What? No!” Bow says. “We all went to the Fright Zone together, so we should all deal with your mom together. You shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

“But I was the one who made the choice to go, so it’s my responsibility to face the consequences.”

“Actually, it was kind of Shadow Weaver who convinced you to go, so shouldn’t _she_ face some of the consequences?”

“She’s not here right now–”

“Do you think maybe we should be a little bit worried about that?” Adora asks, setting Hordak down against a wall.

“We’ll figure that out later. Right now I need to talk to my mom.” With that, Glimmer leaves her friends behind, entering the throne room. Mom is definitely going to kill her.

-

Pain. In his arm, especially from the port, and in his head, and everywhere. Is something wrong with his armor? What happened? Explosion, Entrapta, protect her – no, that’s the old armor. Entrapta made him new armor, better armor. She – what happened to the new armor? A battle. A battle in the sanctum, with far too many princesses… Entrapta. Entrapta joined the princesses. Ah. That’s quite an effective distraction from the pain. Marvelous, replacing the pain in his body with much worse pain. Just what this awful day needed.

There are people around him. Horde soldiers? Probably too much to hope for. He cracks an eye open. A small Etherian stands in front of him, dark hair… slightly familiar... a princess. The small ice princess. He’s likely surrounded by princesses. Captured. This is far from ideal. But… Entrapta. She should be here. Is she one of the princesses surrounding him? She wasn’t part of the initial attack, but perhaps she was doing something in the background, working her brilliant technological marvels against him… there's no way to know. Best to continue assessing the situation before making his consciousness known.

A conversation drifts into his awareness, or maybe it would be better defined as an argument.

“-but it worked!”

“But what if it hadn’t? You could have been killed!” That voice and manner of speech are distinct, and somewhat familiar.

“But we weren’t killed! The plan worked!”

“What plan? Are you honestly telling me that there was a _plan_ involved in all of this?” A commander speaking with an irresponsible subordinate. Not likely to be occurring in the Fright Zone, unless others arrived later. This is not looking promising for Hordak’s own situation.

“Of course we had a plan!”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? I never said you couldn’t go, just that you needed–”

“How could I have told you?! You never listen!” Not a particularly respectful subordinate.

“No, _you_ never listen. I am your mother and your queen,” which answers the question about where he is, “and I demand–”

“What, that I always do exactly what you say? That I stay safe at home forever, even when my friends are in danger?”

“That is not even slightly what I said!”

“It’s what you meant!”

“It is not. I only want you to learn to take the time to _think_ before you do things.”

“Well this time if I’d taken any more time to 'think', Hordak would've opened a portal that would have destroyed the world!” It most certainly would not have destroyed this world. His work with Entrapta would never have allowed a flaw of that magnitude. Even if she was secretly sabotaging him throughout the whole project? Surely she was not. Surely this betrayal was simply his due for his abominable treatment of her after Catra brought them the sword. Surely she hadn't planned to betray him all along. Surely some of it was real. Surely she wouldn’t… Entrapta wouldn’t…

“What harm would it have done to take ten seconds to just _tell_ me this plan–”

“What, so you could tell me it was too dangerous? That’s all you ever say.”

“Forgive me for not wanting my only daughter to die like my husband.” And now he’s at the mercy of one with a personal grudge against him. He could hardly have allowed the king to live, but he suspects the queen will not be swayed by the necessity of preventing such a powerful being from returning with valuable information. So now he has two enemies here with a personal reason to harm him. Surely Entrapta wouldn’t _truly_ – but he scorned her help. He rejected her assistance with repairing her gift to him, acting as if _it_ were the flawed thing, instead of him. Such ingratitude should rightfully be punished. But why must she bring him _here?_ Did she not know he would gladly submit to any reparations required of him? ~~~~

“But I didn’t die! No one did. We got Adora back, and we stopped them from opening that portal thing–” So the portal did not succeed. Foolish to hope for any better.

“Be that as it may–”

“AND we captured Hordak!”

“Regardless – You did _what?!”_

Perhaps that’s his cue to join the conversation. He can at least try to begin his captivity with some semblance of dignity.


	3. Chapter 3

Hordak rises to his feet and steps through the door into the throne room, ignoring the shouts behind him. Even with all of the damage his armor has taken, it still retains sufficient functionality to keep him standing, despite the injuries exacerbating his defect. Yet another testament to Entrapta’s brilliance – but he can’t afford to think about Entrapta right now. Unless she’s waiting in the throne room – he searches the faces that are staring at him in shock. No Entrapta. Of course she isn’t present, fool. What level of self-delusion made him think for an instant that she would wish to look upon him again, so soon after realizing the full depth of his inadequacy? It’s not as though she would come to gloat. Entrapta is far better than that. Perhaps she–

“Guards!” The queen cries, breaking free of whatever held her immobile. The guards, similarly spurred into movement by the queen’s command, surround him with their moon-tipped staffs, none coming within reach. As if he would fight them like this, alone and injured with damaged armor in the fortress of his enemies. No, the only reasonable way forward is through civil conversation – which is unfortunate. He's fully aware of his lack of skill in the areas of charm and persuasion.

“What is the meaning of this?” The queen demands, leaving her throne to approach him. She does not pass her circle of guards, and they do not lower their weapons. At least they still perceive him as a credible threat. Somewhat absurd, given his current condition, but perhaps he can take advantage of it? He stands taller and attempts to project an air of menace.

“I – ah…” That is not menacing! Nor does it promote a civil conversation between equals. Why couldn’t Entrapta be here? He's so much better at talking to her. And to subordinates, but the queen of Brightmoon does not see herself as anyone’s subordinate.

“Well?” The queen insists.

“How should I know?!” he snaps, before quickly regretting it. There is nothing to be gained from letting the queen see how this situation affects him. This conversation is not going well. How does one speak to the leader of an opposing faction without the backing of Horde Prime, or at least a military force? There are likely protocols for this, but not ones he ever learned. What he would give for access to the infinite knowledge and support of the hivemind... but that old wound is not worth prodding. The present requires his full attention. What does one say to a rebel queen? With what demeanor? Dignity is likely necessary – but then, he is a prisoner, with no power whatsoever, despite whatever airs he might try to project. Perhaps more subservience is necessary? The thought grates on him, the mere idea of kneeling before anyone but Lord Prime… such a disloyal little brother. To put others in the place of Prime, merely to preserve his own life… he shudders.

“Are you ill?” The queen inspects him intently.

“What?” The sickness at the thought of treating another as deserving of big brother’s glory worsens at the implications of that question. What can she see? What defects does this broken armor fail to hide? What will they do when they realize they have captured not the powerful leader of an opposing military force but merely a defective castoff? They must not know! “I am not ill!”

“Hmm,” the queen says, continuing to inspect him.

What does she see?! “If you are done examining me, perhaps we can discuss the terms of my imprisonment?” he growls. Of course, that’s assuming it will be imprisonment and not execution.

The queen briefly frowns, before returning to impassivity. “I suppose that is a reasonable request.” Hordak lets none of the relief that washes through him show on his face. If it can be seen in his ears, well, few Etherians are skilled at reading ears. “But first, I would very much like to know how this situation occurred.”

“I told you, we captured him!” the princess who was working directly with Shadow Weaver pushes her way through the guards to poke him in the chest. “So _you_ cut the attitude and show some respect!” The guards pull the princess away, likely fearing retaliation from him. None is forthcoming, of course, because unlike some people, _he_ is capable of at least attempting a civil conversation. “Hey! He’s my prisoner, so I should get to help interrogate him!”

“This is not an interrogation,” the queen corrects, far more gently than seems appropriate for a subordinate engaging in such a way with a dangerous prisoner – just one more example of the incomprehensible nature of Etherian hierarchies.

“Then what is it?” The princess does not seem to be successfully chastised. In the Fright Zone, he might consider these signs of a poorly hidden impending threat to his person and position, but here it’s none of his concern. Regardless, the question is one he would also like answered.

The queen’s answer is less than enlightening. “It is – I am trying to determine what to do with the very dangerous and valuable prisoner who has just wandered into my throne room without warning. Unrestrained, I must note.”

“That’s – we knocked him out!”

“That is somewhat of an improvement, except for the fact that unconscious people tend to wake up.”

“She-Ra was guarding him!”

“Hi!” someone, presumably She-Ra, calls from the back of the room.

“And don’t forget about the rest of us!” calls presumably another princess.

“Well, I suppose that is slightly less concerning. Still, did you not consider that perhaps you should have _opened_ with the presence of the ruler of the Fright Zone in our hallway, instead of waiting until he was ready to walk in here of his own volition?”

“You never gave me a chance! You were too busy telling me how stupid it was to save Adora and keep the world from ending.” That is actually a good point. Despite the princess apparently ignoring orders, her mission was remarkably successful, and likely deserving of some sort of accolades, or at least further opportunities to prove her worth. But, again, the leadership structure of Brightmoon is irrelevant to his goals.

“Then you should have interrupted me!” His presence does seem like the sort of information that would be worth violating protocol to share… he shakes that thought away. No good can come from seeing reason in the words of queens and princesses.

“Like you’d have listened!”

“Of course I would have listened! That is entirely different than interrupting just to argue about–” the queen glances at Hordak. “We will discuss this later. Right now, we need to determine what to do with the prisoner.”

“Now can we interrogate him?” one of the voices with She-Ra says with glee.

“Why do you want to interrogate him so badly, Frosta?” another voice says with concern. So the first voice is Frosta. Remembering the names of those who wish him harm might be important to his survival.

“Um… because he’s the evil bad guy who’s trying to take over the world? So we need to learn about all his evil plots!”

“Hey, uh, Frosta?” A new voice, male – the archer.

“Yeah?”

“Remember the ears?”

“What are you–? Oh, right.” Her voice softens. “The ears.”

What do ears have to do with anything? Do they intend to remove his? That doesn't fit the tone with which they are being discussed. This is the strangest imprisonment he has ever encountered.

“We will not be interrogating anyone at this moment.” The queen’s declaration nearly makes Hordak weak with relief. Although he is confident in his ability to withstand some degree of torture, he could really use some rest before it begins. The armor is currently the only thing keeping him upright.

“Then what are we going to do with him?” the Brightmoon princess demands.

“That will be decided later, when everyone has rested and I have had time to think. In the meantime – guards, are you prepared to secure Hordak along with Shadow Weaver in the cell?”

“Yes, my queen,” one guard says, weapon temporarily removed from pointing at Hordak in order to salute.

“Maybe we need just a _little_ bit more security for Hordak than that particular, uh, cell?” She-Ra – Adora, they seem to prefer the name Adora, conveniently a name he’s familiar with – says.

“It’s a perfectly good cell,” the queen huffs. Now Hordak can’t deny his curiosity about this cell, in addition to hoping that it has somewhere he can sit down. A reasonably clean floor will do. He would just rather it not be this particular floor, in this ostentatious room, surrounded by guards wielding unfamiliar but likely dangerous weapons, as well as a queen and several princesses, all of whom are likely to take any sudden movements as signs of an attack. Again, he's grateful for this remarkable armor.

“If you say so.” Was Adora quite this irreverent when she lived in the Fright Zone? It doesn’t seem like something Shadow Weaver would allow, although that’s only speculation because he never had much involvement in the training of young cadets – just enough to make sure adequate food, housing, and conditioning were provided. The details of how to do so were best left to someone more familiar with the care of immature beings. Not that Shadow Weaver has proven herself to be especially reliable, so who knows whether she actually chose optimal maturation conditions for the future cadets or had some other end in mind... irrelevant. Focus.

“I do say so. Now, guards–”

“My queen!” A guard pushes past the princesses in the doorway, stepping around Hordak’s guards to stand before their queen.

“Yes?” The queen replies, voice strained.

“Shadow Weaver was spotted leaving the palace. Guards attempted to capture her, but she disappeared into the civilian population. Checkpoints have been established at all major exits to the city, and patrols have been increased at the borders, but given the prisoner’s highly advanced magical abilities, she may have already escaped.”

The queen rubs her eyes. “I see.”

“No casualties or damage to infrastructure have been reported, and the Moonstone appears undisturbed.”

“Well that’s a relief, at least. Continue the search, and report any findings to me. Inform Mystacor of her possible escape, as well the other members of the Alliance who are not already present in this room.”

“At once, your majesty.” The guard bows and leaves.

“Now,” the queen says sternly, looking between Hordak and the Brightmoon princess. “Who can tell me how this escape occurred?” Her glare focuses on Hordak.

“I don’t have the slightest idea. She did not seem to be imprisoned when she and the princesses invaded the Fright Zone. I have not been well-informed of events since then.”

“Do you claim that you did not plan this in advance?”

“Are you asking if I planned to have my lab destroyed and be captured by enemies so that my traitorous former second in command could escape the prison that I am about to be placed in?”

The queen’s glare lightens. “I suppose that would be a rather unlikely plan, or at least one that failed spectacularly.”

“I assure you that I have no desire for Shadow Weaver to freely roam Etheria. She is loyal to no one but herself and would be happy to bring any land, including mine, to its knees for her own gain.” Another foolish place to put his trust, though at least he managed to remain skeptical enough of that loyalty that it did not sting nearly as much as Entrapta’s betrayal.

“Hey, she’s not that bad,” the Brightmoon princess says. Every brow in the room raises skeptically. “What? Okay, so maybe she left rather than staying our prisoner, but at least she helped instead of sitting around doing nothing.”

“Glimmer!” The queen’s ire switches entirely to her daughter.

“What?” Glimmer crosses her arms. “She helped a lot! The world could have ended without her. She even helped me with my powers.”

“Yes, she helped your father with his powers, too, until she decided to use him for a highly destructive, forbidden ritual. Shadow Weaver’s ‘help’ is always for her own benefit, and very dangerous for whoever she claims to be helping.” Once again, Hordak finds himself agreeing with Brightmoon royalty. It’s a highly disconcerting feeling. He would like it to stop.

“Even if that’s true, she still helped us. The world still didn’t end, and we still have Hordak as a prisoner. Actually, Hordak is a more important prisoner than Shadow Weaver, anyway, so what’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big–!?” The queen takes a deep, centering breath. “We will discuss this later. For now, Glimmer, go to your room, and try to think about–”

“Go to my room?! You can’t just send me to my room like a little kid! I just saved the world and captured our worst enemy!”

“You did, and we will celebrate both of those accomplishments. However, that does not excuse you from taking the time to reflect on your actions and consider why I might not be entirely pleased with the methods you chose.”

“But you–”

“Just as _I_ will reflect on why you felt the need to do so. We will both discuss our conclusions when we have less of an audience. Now, as I was trying to say a moment ago, guards, please escort our prisoner to his cell. Make sure that all possible weapons are removed and all avenues of escape are eliminated. And please, _no one,_ ” she looks over the assembled princesses and the archer, “no matter what world-ending threat you think he might help you face, no matter what skills he might promise to help you improve, _no one_ let _this_ prisoner out of his cell.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Some of those warnings above apply pretty strongly here.
> 
> 2\. This is not a ‘the alliance is actually evil’ story. However, that doesn’t mean they always make good choices.
> 
> 3\. General Juliet is a real Brightmoon guard, seen in the show but apparently named in a tweet, but she has a wiki page so I’m going with her for my main guard point of view.

The guards split into two groups, a smaller one to make sure princess Glimmer returns to her room and stays there, and a larger one led by General Juliet to escort the prisoner to his cell. Given the protests that trail down the hall and the silent cooperation of their own charge, it almost seems like it should be the other way around. If anything, maybe the purpose of Juliet's presence is more to deter the group of teenagers who seem to think they’re being sneaky.

The prisoner pauses at the door to his cell, frowning at what he can see of the room. “This… is a prison cell?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t resist being nudged into the room at the point of a moon staff, instead examining the décor.

Unusually cooperative or not, quite a few guards breathe a sigh of relief once Hordak is safely through the door. This cell might have begun as just another spare room, and still retains most of its comfortable and soothing furnishings, but it has been reinforced considerably with both magical and physical safeguards since the time it failed to hold She-Ra. It should be secure enough to hold a disarmed Hordak – assuming that he continues cooperating long enough to be disarmed.

“What weapons are you carrying?” General Juliet asks.

“If I was carrying weapons, would I not have used them already?” The prisoner – Hordak, it’s important to remember that this very cooperative prisoner is Hordak, Lord of the Fright Zone – drags his perplexed gaze away from the waterfall near the window.

“What about your armor?”

“What about it?” Hordak’s ears twitch, face taking on a strange expression - some mixture of pride and grief? What could a person like him have to grieve for? Juliet shakes her head. It doesn’t matter. The goal is to secure the prisoner.

“Does it have weapons capability?”

His face closes off. “No.”

“No, it just lets you throw around hundreds of pounds of mmpff!” One of the ‘sneaky’ observers shouts. So many things would be so much easier if so many of the princesses weren’t children. Teenagers. Young adults. Often the same thing.

Still, these children are the ones who have actually fought Hordak. “I’m more inclined to believe the words of our allies than anything you say.”

Hordak turns away from the guards. “Hmpf. Believe what you will.”

At least he’s not fighting them. They outnumber him, but with the kind of strength she’s just heard described, it seems smart to avoid a physical confrontation if at all possible. Still, that armor needs to come off.

“Are the clothes under your armor acceptable to wear in public, or will you need something else?”

The prisoner – Hordak, this is Hordak, never forget that, easy as it is when he’s discussing things so calmly – frowns, glancing back at the guards. “Why does that matter?”

Are Fright Zone prisoners kept naked? “Brightmoon does not humiliate or neglect its prisoners. Part of our duty is to make sure all of your needs are met, including providing acceptable clothing.”

Hordak finally turns fully around to face them, confusion clear on his face. “My armor provides sufficient covering.”

“Your armor also appears to function as a weapon.”

“It does not–”

“We’ve been told that it does, by a more reputable source than you. Prisoners can’t be allowed to keep possession of their weapons.” Surely he doesn’t expect to convince her otherwise? He has to know how holding prisoners works. This is Hordak! He’s held prisoners. He's held the king as a prisoner. King Micah surely wasn’t allowed to freely use his magic. Although it is harder to disarm a magic user. Maybe that’s why he was killed? It makes a disturbing amount of sense, faced with their own dangerous prisoner, but that’s not how Brightmoon operates. Hordak needs to be disarmed.

Hordak crosses his arms. “Understandable, I suppose, but I will not be removing my armor. I believe it has been thoroughly demonstrated that your princesses are able to defeat me in this state.”

Juliet shares a glance with several of her fellow guards. His resistance is building. This is starting to look like a problem. They close ranks around him, wary but not yet aggressive. No one wants this to escalate into a fight. That surely must include Hordak, or he would have already attacked or tried to escape, but he can’t possibly expect them to let him wander around Brightmoon fully armed. “Removing your armor is not optional. It’s a weapon. The queen has ordered that you be disarmed. You’re a prisoner. Prisoners can’t keep their weapons.” He has to see reason. Why would he cooperate this far but fight them now?

Hordak clutches at the jewel embedded at the base of the armor’s neck. Something of sentimental value? Unlikely. Part of the weapons system? Maybe. “Unacceptable.”

“You keeping the armor is unacceptable.”

“I will agree to remain in this room and obey your commands without protest as long as–”

“You aren’t really in a position to bargain.” Unless he is, and they just don't know it yet. This is Hordak. No one can afford to let down their guard around him. He still isn’t fighting them, though. It would be so much better for everyone to keep it that way.

“Hmpf,” he huffs. “I suppose I could disable its offensive capabilities,” meaning that he was lying about it being a weapon. Surprise, surprise, “assuming this primitive place contains sufficiently advanced equipment to complete the work.”

“No. Trusting a prisoner to disable their own weapons goes against all security protocols. So does giving a prisoner ‘sufficiently advanced equipment’, for that matter.”

Hordak looks skeptically around the cell. “You have security protocols?”

“Yes. Now remove your armor.”

“I will not undress for your amusement!” he snaps, clenching his fists.

“Which is why I asked whether the armor’s undergarments are acceptable outerwear.” Juliet didn’t reach her current position by being deterred by arrogance or aggression. The queen’s orders are clear and reasonable. The prisoner needs to be disarmed and secured in his cell. No amount of snarling from him is going to change that.

“The only ‘acceptable’ clothing is my armor.”

“Which we can’t let you keep. Would you like to remove it, or would you like us to remove it for you?”

“No one will be removing it!”

“That isn’t one of the options. You’ve cooperated so far; why is this a problem?”

“That is none of your concern. No one on this pathetic, primitive backwater of a planet–!”

“If you have nothing to say but insults, we will remove your armor and be on our way.”

“You will _not!”_ he snarls, twirling towards the door. The guards behind him form a barrier with their moon staffs. Shuffling and muttering outside the door suggests that the children might be about to come ‘help’. They’d better _not._

“Would you like a robe to wear over your underclothes?” Juliet continues, ignoring the threat of interruption. Civility might still be possible. The prisoner is agitated, yelling and snarling, but he hasn’t tried to hurt anyone yet. He just needs to understand that removing the armor is non-negotiable so they can do it without a fight and give the people in charge a chance to figure out what to do. She can handle negotiations with agitated individuals. She’s done it before. Firm, calm, competent, confident, reasonable, not upset by anything he says or does – this is no different from talking down a drunk veteran convinced that the queen should have done something more to save their village. Except that it’s Hordak, but that just makes it more important to avoid escalating the situation.

“No one will be removing my armor!” He’s breathing faster now, getting very upset. Maybe it’s time to back off a little, just long enough to give everyone a chance to calm down. “Anyone who tries will–!”

“Hey, you don’t just get to threaten the guards like that!” A rush of vines, water, and ice slam through the door, knocking several guards off their feet and making Hordak turn and snarl at the intruders. Ice encases his feet and vines tie his arms to his chest.

“Release me this instant!” the no-longer-cooperative prisoner roars.

“As soon as your armor is off and everyone is safe,” Perfuma says in what might be meant as a soothing voice, but mostly makes Juliet want to join Hordak in tearing off the vines and swiping at her head.

“Get out of here!” she commands the brats who pushed her dangerous prisoner into a violent rage.

“Guys, I really don’t think this is helping!” Adora as She-Ra says as she blocks some ice before it can hit a guard. Have none of these kids learned how to use their powers in room full of allies?!

“Definitely not helping!” Bow cries, abandoning an attempt to nock an arrow when a wave of water almost knocks the bow out of his hand. “I think the guards had it handled!”

“Sure, because standing around talking was definitely getting the dangerous evil guy’s armor off,” Mermista drawls as she pulls more water from the waterfall.

“At least he wasn’t trying to kill them!”

“Hey, now I don’t have to feel bad about punching him in the face!” Frosta yells, forming a fist of ice.

“No punching the prisoner in the face!” Juliet commands, grabbing the very literal _child’s_ arm.

“But he’s fighting us!”

“That’s kind of our fault,” Bow points out.

“He was about to anyway–”

“If you’re not going to leave then help us restrain the prisoner,” Juliet snaps. _“Restrain!”_ she insists at the look of glee on the far-too-violent-to-have-any-actual-understanding-of-violence _child’s_ face.

“Okay, okay, I won’t smash his face in.”

The ensuing battle is vicious. The quiet, cooperative prisoner of earlier is gone, replaced by mindless roars, slashing claws, and powerful, mechanically reinforced limbs that easily throw several guards across the room. If it wasn’t Hordak, Juliet would almost say he was panicking. Hordak or not, it looks close enough to panic that she might actually like to try a few de-escalation techniques, if every opportunity to safely put some space between them wasn’t quickly ruined by over-enthusiastic teenagers who have never heard of a de-escalation technique in their lives. No one is going to be calming down any time soon.

They’re going to have to pry the armor off of him. It’s the last thing she wants to do, but they can’t bring in an army every time they want to bring him dinner. It’s dangerous, and somewhat cruel – she’s never seen armor that takes well to being yanked off by someone who doesn’t even know how it fits together – but he’s not going to cooperate now. This state of rage is too dangerous. Her guards are getting hurt. She will not put handling the prisoner gently above their lives. He needs to be disarmed.

The princesses can only restrain Hordak for short periods of time before he breaks free. Hopefully that ridiculous strength is just adrenaline and something to do with the armor, because otherwise they’re in trouble. She would rather not share the change in plans with the prisoner, but it’s unavoidable, given that none of the teenagers are on the Brightmoon communication system.

“Next time he’s captured, start taking the armor apart. Keep going until it’s gone!”

The shouts of agreement are almost drowned out by the prisoner’s incoherent howls of rage.

He fights harder against capture than before her orders, as expected, but they eventually manage to get a couple of plates of metal off. Their loss seems to do something to the electrical system that the armor apparently has. Although he still escapes, his struggles keep getting interrupted by visible shocks, making him much easier to capture, if not easier to hold on to. The shocks hit anyone touching him indiscriminately, but mostly seem directed inward.

Hordak screams as electricity arcs across his body. A concerted wave of water, ice, and vines knocks him to the ground. He crawls to his hands and knees, lunging blindly at anyone in reach, but She-Ra leaps to their defense, bringing the flat of her blade down on the metal tubing across his back. Hordak convulses, letting out a gasping cry.

“Don’t break his spine!” Juliet snaps. Paralyzing the prisoner isn’t an acceptable way to secure him in his cell. Neither is cutting him in half.

“Sorry!” She-Ra cringes. These are teenagers. By the queen, these are teenagers trying to safely restrain a dangerous prisoner. They don’t know what they’re doing. They aren’t trained for this! Why couldn’t they have just stayed outside?

“Never mind! He’s down! Take advantage of it!”

“Oh, uh, right!” She-Ra hesitates for a second, then sits on his back, twisting his arms behind him. He roars – is that anger, or pain? No time to find out – and thrashes, but can’t get away. They quickly set to removing some more armor plates, along with that tube that She-Ra nearly smashed. The frantic prisoner screeches in what definitely is pain, but as a metal boot slams into Juliet’s leg she finds it hard to care.

As more armor is removed, the battle gets easier. Hordak escapes again when they turn him over to remove the chest plate, which must be connected in a way that doesn’t rely on the back plate because it doesn’t fall off, but no one is terribly concerned with the mechanics of armor attachment at this point as Hordak lunges for the door. Several staffs and a nearby fern push him back, unfortunately right into Juliet, who finds herself trapped between Hordak and the wall. Her instinctive knee to his back is something she quickly regrets when it hits metal, the impact radiating up her spine in a way that she can only hope will leave nothing more than bruises. Hordak screeches an inhuman sound and collapses, curling into a defensive ball against the wall. He does not rise again.

Not one to waste an opportunity, Juliet makes sure her guards complete their task, pulling off the boots and prying Hordak’s arms apart to pull off the chest plate – ignoring the disturbing fleshy sound as it’s removed – and then letting him return to his defensive position. “Now you five, get out," she snaps at the teenagers who started it all.

“Hey, we helped!” She-Ra protests, pointing her sword at the man gasping on the floor.

“You did, and now you can leave.” She gestures them to the door.

“Hey, uh, he doesn’t look too good,” Bow says, sounding worried.

“I’m sure he doesn’t.” Not that she can see much, with the way he’s curled against the wall. “This is what can happen when a situation with a prisoner gets out of hand.” Which is why Juliet insists that every one of her guards is trained to avoid such a thing, but the princesses have never been hers to train, especially not those from other countries. Maybe it’s time for that to change.

“Do you think we should help him?” Bow reaches for Hordak, but gets hissed at for his efforts. The less injured guards step forward in his defense, but the prisoner only collapses again, a strange little chittering sound in his heavy breath.

“I think you should let us take care of it, as I asked you to do in the first place.”

Bow nods sheepishly and backs away. The others reluctantly follow.

Juliet approaches the prisoner, as close as she dares on her injured knee. “Do you need any assistance?”

The chitter in his breath turns into a growl. He doesn’t answer.

“Would you like some warmer clothes?”

He hisses. She doesn’t have the energy for this conversation. Her knee aches, and there are plenty of other people with injuries that need to be assessed.

“Arreta, get a robe out of the closet.” To Hordak, she says. “If you don’t want help, we’re going to leave it with you. You can choose to wear it or not, but that dress doesn’t look very warm.”

Hordak grumbles as Arreta drapes the robe over his body, but relaxes slightly out of his defensive curl. Either he was cold, or she was right about that dress not being meant as outerwear. Either way, he’s covered now, and she needs to take care of her guards.

“Would you like help getting into bed, or any medical assistance?”

He hisses again, which she takes as a no. Fair enough. He probably wants nothing to do with them right now. This situation was handled badly. Part of the blame for that falls on her, as general, but she can’t help but resent the ‘help’ that made her job so much harder.

That ‘help’ seems to be having trouble seeing the situation for what it is. “You know, a little gratitude goes a long way,” Perfuma says. “I know you didn’t want to be captured, but it doesn’t do any good to be angry about it.”

“Ugh,” Mermista groans. “It’s Hordak. He’s always angry. That’s, like, his thing, or something.”

“Hey, uh, Lord Hordak? I mean, um, Hordak, because I definitely don’t follow you anymore and the Horde is evil and everything. But, um, it’s not so bad here, okay? People are actually really nice when you stop trying to kill them, although I guess it probably doesn’t seem that way right now, which I guess is why General Juliet is trying to get us all to shut up and go away?”

Juliet nods firmly, brows raised in warning.

“We’re just trying to help,” Frosta insists. “Look, I didn’t even punch you in the face. I’m sure we could work it out if you’d just stop sulking about losing.”

“Uh, Frosta?” Bow says. “I’m pretty sure he’s actually hurt."

“Oh.” Frosta’s face falls. “Well, it can’t be that bad if he keeps attacking us. Right?”

Juliet certainly hopes not. She did not set out today to seriously injure a prisoner. None of their attacks but the last one stopped him from fighting, and she can’t imagine the Lord of the Fright Zone could be easily hurt by a guard’s knee. He probably just needs some time to rest, preferably without being surrounded by the people who just pried the armor off of his body. Just to be sure they aren’t missing anything critical, Juliet asks “do you need anything else from us?” before letting her fellow guards help her limp away from the wall.

The roar of “GET OUT!” sends a pretty clear message, so they leave, making sure none of the teenagers linger. The prisoner clearly needs some time alone.

-

The guards are gone. For now. They will return. Of course they will. This is only the beginning of the torture they will inflict on him. But for now, he is alone. Not safe, but alone. He can recover. For now.

Hordak lets himself shake as the full extent of his agony washes over him. There is no one to see, no one to watch him flinch as pain shoots up his nerves from damaged ports, no one to watch him scrabble at the floor for relief from aching muscles and bones. No one to see how much weaker these movements are in his legs.

His legs. He can feel them, oh dearest brother Prime can he ever feel them, which is how he knows his spinal cord was not severed. The pain from the guard’s attack on his spinal port whited out the world for a moment, but when it all came back there was enough pain in his legs to know that he will be fine. Well, for a given value of fine. Not that it matters.

How did this captivity turn so badly so quickly? He was cooperating, and maintaining his side of a civil conversation, even if no one else knows how to do that in this place. His guard was also being civil, could at least be spoken to in a civilized manner, even if Hordak did let his flawed emotional state get the best of him. Even then, she remained calm and collected. She might have even been persuaded not to take his armor, if not for the princesses.

The princesses. Entrapta’s friends. The ones for whom she betrayed him. They hardly seem worthy of – but no. That is looking at things from entirely the wrong perspective. It has nothing to do with their worth and everything to do with his.

He almost thought that Entrapta might have had something to do with the strange civility, almost kindness, that he was shown until a few moments ago. Now he can only hope that she didn’t have anything to do with it. Surely she did not. Entrapta is not duplicitous – except that obviously she _is_ , or he would not be here. Could she really have encouraged such false kindness, only to have them turn on him as viciously as they did? Tears drip from his eyes. Could she really be so angry as to condone _this_ being done to him?

No! That does not fit with anything he knows of her. Entrapta was entirely genuine until he in his pathetic idiocy over simple, _deserved_ humiliation drove her away. Either that, or he never knew her at all. Perhaps all of it was false, and he fell for it just as he nearly fell for the ruse of having some ability to influence what happens to him here. Perhaps she only ever meant him harm, and was only waiting for the opportunity?

If she was going to harm him, could she not at least have had the decency to do it herself? Why leave it to guards and other princesses? Does she despise him that much?

 _No!_ Entrapta would not do this to him! Abandon him, yes, after he scorned her kindness and the incredible gift of the armor that she had _just_ given him, but this? Leave him in such agony, such helplessness and humiliation? That is not the Entrapta he knows. Knew. Thought he knew.

But why not? Why shouldn’t Entrapta’s gift be taken from him after such ingratitude? Any fool could see why he no longer deserves it, and yet he insisted on keeping it. The audacity! Why shouldn’t he be left this helpless wreck after refusing the command to give up what was already rightfully hers? He wouldn’t be in this state if he had simply accepted the punishment he was due. It was barely even punishment, until he turned it into one, simply the removal of a gift he had scorned.

Being left in enemy territory with nothing but his own defective body would have been a reasonable consequence for failing to show proper appreciation for the restoration of so much strength, for such relief from pain, for feeling so much less defective than he has in years… and wasting it all. More than that, he yelled at her! Snarled at her! Turned his own frustration and humiliation on Entrapta, as if it were her responsibility to fix his failures. It’s a wonder she did not demand her gift back right then and there. Why didn't she? Why the need to resort to this?

Perhaps she felt she couldn’t. Perhaps… perhaps she was afraid of him! She is no Big Brother, who could strike him down for such impudence with barely a thought. Entrapta is quite capable, but she is only one small Etherian, and she had just given him strength beyond any he has seen displayed on this world. Did she think he might turn her gift against her? Did he give her cause to believe he might? The thought is sickening.

Or was she merely unwilling to tolerate him snapping at her like a fool, as any being of her greatness would be, and decided that bringing in the princesses was the most efficient way to deal with him? If so, it was effective. He has been quite thoroughly dealt with.

It still seems unlike her to hurt him like this. Entrapta is not cruel. In fact, she is remarkably kind, assuming that what seemed like kindness before was not an elaborate ruse. He has to assume that it was not, for the sake of what little sanity he hopes to retain in this place. So, assuming that he ever knew anything about her at all, ~~surely he did, surely~~ , she can’t have intended to damage him quite this badly. It’s impractical, if nothing else, at least if the princesses intend to get any use out of him. Unless they only intend to torture him, an idea that cannot be discarded but is also not worth considering until seeing more evidence in its favor.

Which means that he likely caused this misery himself. He is such a fool! He knows perfectly well the futility of resisting a well-deserved punishment! If he had behaved as such for Prime, he would no longer be around to have these thoughts. ~~Which almost seems preferable-~~

No! Do not even entertain that thought. There is still use left in these pathetic, withered limbs, and his mind still works as well as ever, foolish loss of control aside. Perhaps he can be of value for something other than satisfying a princess’s sadistic impulses. Perhaps he can even please Entrapta, redeem himself in her eyes. He has been cast aside for his fundamentally defective nature before, and it never stopped him from trying to repair what went wrong and prove himself worthy. ~~How could he ever be worthy of-~~ It does not matter! Enough of this foolish melancholy! It’s clear where Entrapta wants him to be – in this castle, without his armor, subject to the whims of the princesses. Even if that is not what Entrapta wants, it is where he is, so he simply must live with it.

Shaking the pathetic tears from his eyes, he props himself up on his elbows and searches the room for a more appropriate place to rest. If he must live in this state, then he will do so with dignity. The height of the bed is daunting, and even if he could get in it, it’s unclear when he would be able to get back out. He will not face his captors while bedridden. The chair – hmm. It’s large enough that he wouldn’t have to struggle with how to sit in it. It has more cushioning than any chair he has ever seen, which would be a balm to his aching… well, everything, although he won’t be able to get out of it any more easily than the bed. However, a chair is a more dignified seat than a bed. If he must pick a piece of furniture to be confined to for the next few days – which, realistically, he must – then the chair is probably the best choice. He knows how to sit in a chair with dignity.

With one more glance at the door to ensure that he is not being observed, Hordak begins the long, painful crawl to his new throne.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update! I've figured out how to work on this during slow times at work, so updates might go a little faster now. Pinning down the plot, on the other hand, is still a challenge, so who knows?

Shadows creep through the palace of Brightmoon, following the children in their headlong rush to share the latest news with their banished friend. The children chatter mindlessly, too caught up in mostly incoherent discussion of recent events to notice the darkness marring the corners and crevices of the normally glittering halls. The darkness appreciates this state of affairs. 

The children come to an abrupt halt in front of a door with a pair of guards who can’t possibly have any purpose but to remind the occupants of the castle that the Princess has been sent to her room. The guards make no effort to keep the other children out – demonstrating either their own incompetency or the complete farce that such an insufficient show of confining this Princess truly is. The idea that the child wouldn’t simply leave her artificial confinement should be ludicrous, but there she is, pouting in her bed.

If there has ever been a child more in need of guidance in growing into her own power, Shadow Weaver has neither seen nor heard of her. She could have been an invaluable mentor to the girl, helping her achieve freedom from the pathetic yet imposing reign of her mother and eventually to take the full power of the Moonstone for herself – and for Shadow Weaver, of course.

But that plan might have taken years, depending on the course of other events, and contained so many possible points of failure. Now that a plan with fewer risks and so many more possibilities for reward has presented itself, the one with the princess hardly seems worth pursuing. Assuming that the princesses have properly disposed of Hordak – which Shadow Weaver can’t yet know for certain, given the admittedly quite functional spell work on the room, but surely they wouldn’t risk keeping _him_ as a prisoner, especially after her escape - but assuming that they have behaved at all sensibly, then the Fright Zone should be free for the taking. Shadow Weaver intends to be the one to take it - and its runestone,of course. After that… well, there are many things that might be done after that. There are just a few small matters to confirm here, first.

“So what happened?” Glimmer demands, teleporting down from her bed to join the other children.

The sea princess rolls her eyes. “Hordak threw a fit about the guards trying to take his armor off, or something.”

“Is everyone okay? I mean, _mostly_ okay?” Glimmer amends, taking in their battered state.

“Yeah, we’re okay,” Adora says rather distantly, before shaking off whatever was bothering her. The girl always was good at focusing on the task at hand. “We got his armor off, and everyone got out alive.”

“Yeah, no thanks to us,” the archer says in exasperation.

“Uh, no, totally thanks to us,” the ice princess corrects. “He’d have beat up all the guards if we weren’t there.” The youngest child frowns, looking between Adora and the archer. “Right?”

“Right!” the flower princess declares. “Even with all of us there, we could barely control him. The guards would have had a terrible time without us.”

“Except they weren’t,” the archer points out. “Having a terrible time, I mean. They were just talking before we broke in. Not fighting.”

“More like yelling!” the ice princess insists, “and didn’t you hear him threatening them? He was all like “rahr, you will never remove my armor, rahrrr, I’ll rip off your head!” She mimes a very poor imitation of removing someone’s head.

“Hordak tried to rip off the guards’ heads?” Glimmer is far too concerned for her subordinates for a leader in her position. Yes, perhaps Shadow Weaver is right to put any plans involving her on hold for now. The girl is currently far too soft for her purposes, just like her father was at that age.

“No!” the archer quickly reassures the poor fool. “Well, not during that part. He might have later; I’m not really sure. Everything got kind of crazy.”

“He didn’t actually even say he was going to rip off anyone’s heads,” Adora adds, frowning. “It was more of a general kind of ‘don’t touch me’ threat.”

“Well, I guess that’s true,” the flower princess admits, “but wouldn’t everything have gone better if he just hadn’t threatened anyone at all? I’m sure we could have talked it out or - or something. Maybe. Right?”

“Riiight, because the Horde is known for talking things out in big flowery friendship circles,” the sea princess drawls.

“Well, no, I mean… obviously not like that,” the flower girl frets. “Just… why did he have to make everything so confrontational? Couldn’t he have at least tried to get along? He knows he’s our prisoner, and it’s really a very nice prison cell, anyway, so why make such a big fuss about everything?”

“Um… because it’s Hordak?” Glimmer suggests, seeming to share Shadow Weaver’s suspicion that the flower princess has been sampling a few less than legal plants lately.

“Oh. Um, yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess it’s not really reasonable to expect Hordak to participate in any kind of peaceful conflict resolution.”

Adora’s eyes widen in realization and flower girl’s statement. “Except… wait, actually, he did!”

“Um, Adora?” Glimmer’s face and voice both radiate skepticism. “Explain.”

“Okay, um… didn’t you notice, when he was talking to your mom? And when the guards took him to the cell? He didn’t argue, or threaten anyone, or try to get away, or anything. He just did what they said and walked right into his cell. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s about to try to kill everyone to escape, does it?”

“Maybe it was a trick?” the ice princess offers.

“A trick to wait until he’s locked in a cell with a bunch of spells and surrounded by guards to try to get away?” Adora makes an excellent point, demonstrating some of the sensible nature that Shadow Weaver so appreciated in her before all this disastrous She-Ra business. Given the ineffectiveness of Shadow Weaver’s own attempt to incapacitate Hordak, why did he not simply attack and flee? Escape would have been easily accomplished on the way to the cell, but instead he simply followed the guards’ commands as if disobeying never occurred to him. It makes no sense.

“... maybe it was a really stupid trick?” the little ice princess tries. Perhaps Shadow Weaver should pay more attention to their names, now that they keep directly confronting the Horde. As its new leader, that’s probably information she should have. Presumably, these younger ones plan to stay around for longer than their nations’ previous leadership. Rumor has it that the previous king of Salineas actually _retired_ , of all things, leaving his teenage daughter in command. That, at least, would never happen in the Horde. Truly, Etheria deserves better leadership. 

“Or maybe he didn’t actually plan on fighting anyone,” the archer suggests ruefully. “At least not until we kicked the door in and attacked.”

The children look varying degrees of uncomfortable at that idea. Fools. As if Hordak would have cooperated with them for any other reason than to lull them into a false sense of complacency. Certainly, it wasn’t his plan to be captured in the first place, but once he was conscious, he should have easily fought off any number of ordinary guards to make his escape. Failing to incapacitate him to the point that even Brightmoon idiocy couldn’t let him escape was actually a serious flaw in Shadow Weaver’s admittedly spur of the moment plan. Regardless, it’s now irrelevant, because he didn’t even attempt to escape until it was too late. It can only mean that he did have some kind of plan of his own. Fortunately, it seems that someone had enough of a spine to keep it from coming to fruition.

“Well… I mean… he was yelling at the guards,” the flower princess (Smella? That surely isn’t right) tries. “And he could have stopped fighting before things got that bad. Or even after things got that bad. General Juliet tried to talk to him.”

“She tried to talk to us, too, and look at how well that worked out,” the archer sighs.

The sea princess (Mermaid? Mermaida?) rolls her eyes. “Sure, because we totally wouldn’t all be dead right now if we’d just stopped fighting while Hordak was trying to kill us all.”

Adora’s frown deepens. “I really don’t think he was trying to kill us. Actually, if it was anyone but Hordak, I’d say he was just trying to defend himself.”

“Defend himself from what?” the ice princess (Ice-a? Frosty? Frosta?) asks. “Getting locked in the big scary guest room with comfy furniture and room service?”

“Well, I mean… how was he supposed to know that was all we were going to do to him?” Adora asks. “That’s definitely not what would have happened to a prisoner of the Horde. And the Horde doesn’t think you’re any better than they are, remember? Remember when I first met you guys?” Glimmer and Bow nod. “I thought princesses were evil. I would have totally freaked out if you’d locked me in there before I’d gotten to know you and realized that the Horde lied about a lot of things, no matter how nice the room was.”

“But if he thought we were going to do something terrible to him, then why didn’t he try to get away earlier?” Glimmer asks. “He acted just fine with my mom. When did that change?”

“He kind of lost it when the guards told him he’d have to take his armor off,” the archer says.

Adora frowns. “I can understand not being very happy about that. He probably thought they were going to torture him, or something.”

“Are you seriously trying to convince us that _Hordak_ was afraid of the Brightmoon guards?” Glimmer asks incredulously.

“No! I mean… maybe? Not _afraid_ , necessarily, but, I mean, if you had armor that let you throw hundreds of pounds of stuff across the room, would you want to take it off in an enemy’s castle?”

“No,” Glimmer says, “but that’s because my only enemy is _the Horde_. Of course if I had armor I wouldn’t want to take it off in front of the Horde. But we’re obviously different.” The naivety of these children is almost enough to make Shadow Weaver break her cover by laughing. Oh, if only she could have had time to sink her claws a little more deeply into Glimmer.

“Not to a Horde soldier.”

Glimmer throws up her hands in exasperation. “Okay, yes, I get it; Horde soldiers are brainwashed into thinking we’re evil. But Hordak was the one doing the brainwashing. Surely _he_ at least has to know it’s all made up.”

“Actually…” Adora thinks for a moment. “Hordak wasn’t ever the one to actually _tell_ us about princesses, or about anything, really. That was mainly our instructors, and Shadow Weaver - for me and Catra, at least. Hordak mostly stayed in his sanctum and sent commands through her and the force captains.”

“But he had to be the one who started it, right?” Glimmer asks. “Who else would it have come from?”

“I don’t know.” Adora shakes her head. “I mean, obviously he agreed with it, or he wouldn’t have let everyone believe it, but… look, lots of people had stories about princesses, okay? It wasn’t just the official stuff and bedtime stories. The older Horde members, people who were there from the beginning or joined really early on, a lot of their opinions about princesses seemed a lot more... well, personal.”

“So the Horde really, _personally_ , doesn’t like princesses,” the sea princess drawls. “What else is new?”

“No, it’s not just… look, I don’t know.” Adora puffs a few loose strands of hair out of her face. “I don’t know what’s just propaganda and what isn’t, or maybe it’s all just propaganda and some of it is just really, really good propaganda. I know none of you are evil monsters lurking in the trees, just waiting to swoop down and suck out my soul-” she shivers, then shakes her head. “I just mean… look, true or not, the point is that anyone from the Horde would fight someone who was trying to take their armor off in the middle of Brightmoon. Why wouldn’t Hordak do it, too?”

“Then why not before?” Glimmer asks again. “There has to be more to it. Some kind of evil plan he needed the armor for, or something.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter now, anyway.” Is the archer about to confirm Hordak’s destruction so that Shadow Weaver can finally stop listening to the crisis of conscience of a bunch of spoiled children? “The armor is pretty much destroyed, and Hordak didn’t look like he was going to fight anyone any time soon.”

‘Any time soon’. Drat. Not forever, then, which means he’s still alive. Incompetent brats. This introduces an unfortunate level of risk to Shadow Weaver’s plans. A living Hordak is a Hordak with at least a small possibility of escape, seriously jeopardizing her chances of taking control of the Horde and permanently securing access to the runestone. Still, imprisoned and incapacitated is better than free and ruling the Fright Zone. Gaining control of the force captains will be more difficult without Hordak’s death at enemy hands to rally the troops behind, but she’s done more with less. Perhaps some farce of a rescue mission could serve the same purpose - and if the rescue mission goes poorly, resulting in the unfortunate death of Hordak and a few inconvenient subordinates, well, there will surely be someone around to take the blame for that. The difficulty of such a mission is actually part of its appeal - more time to secure the loyalty of the troops, more time to get them accustomed to answering only to her. Yes, there are many ways for Shadow Weaver to bend this turn of events in her favor.

Hearing nothing more of use in the children’s mindless jabbering - some nonsense about seeing Hordak in a robe, at the moment - Shadow Weaver takes her leave. She has work to do. 

***

Bow can’t say he’s entirely comfortable with this - with any of it, really, but especially with this part. Sure, the Horde probably wouldn’t have any problem beating them up, dressing them in silly clothes, and bringing all their friends to stare at them, but that doesn’t mean _they_ should do it. But Frosta wanted to know if Hordak actually put on the fluffy robe, and Glimmer thought they were just making the whole robe thing up, so the next thing he knew, he was trailing his friends down the hallway on the way to a probably very angry Hordak.

The guards in front of the cell door bar their entry with crossed staffs. Glimmer scowls at the guards. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Guarding the door,” one guard explains, face placid.

“Has Hordak tried to escape already?” Glimmer asks.

“No,” is the succinct response.

“... has he been threatening to escape?” Glimmer tries.

“No,” the other guard replies.

“... okaaay.” Glimmer looks to the rest of the Princess Alliance for help. No one has any suggestions. “So, if Hordak hasn’t been trying to escape, why are you blocking the door?”

Bow has a painful suspicion that he knows exactly why the guards are blocking the door. The guards exchange glances, then confirm his suspicion. “You do not have permission to enter this room.”

Glimmer is indignant. “Permission?! Who says I need permission? I’m a princess. I’m the one who captured him in the first place. Whose permission do I need?”

“The Queen’s,” one guard states flatly.

“The - I go in there all the time! Since when do I need mom’s permission?”

“Since the last time you entered this room, you released a dangerous prisoner who is likely even now returning to our enemies.” Angella’s voice comes from behind them, making the whole group jump.

“Mom!”

“Don’t ‘mom’ me. If you can’t be responsible with one prisoner, why should you be allowed access to another?”

“This is different! I wouldn’t let Hordak out. I only let Shadow Weaver out because we needed her!”

“And Hordak couldn't possibly convince you that you needed him?”

“No! Why would anyone accept help from Hordak?”

“Why, indeed…?” Angella trails off, looking distant for a moment. “Well, if you insist on seeing him, I won’t stop you, but I do require that you at least be accompanied by someone with a better record of good judgement.”

“Mom!”

“We’ll go with her, Queen Angella,” Adora offers in her most deferential voice, pulling Bow forward. “We’ll make sure no one lets Hordak escape.”

 _“Adora!”_ Glimmer hisses.

“What?” Adora mouths.

“Arrgh.” Glimmer clenches her fists in her hair.

Angella shakes her head. “As much as I do appreciate your contributions as She-Ra, Adora, and your friendship with my daughter, I must say that I haven’t seen many recent examples of good judgement from you, either.” The Queen’s gaze passes over the whole group. “And that goes for all of you. General Juliet has informed me of how so many of our guards came to be injured.”

“Hordak-” Frosta starts.

“Hordak certainly played a role, as would be expected from a prisoner. He is not the one who I expected better of.” Her disapproving gaze makes all of them bow their heads in shame. Not that Bow wasn’t already pretty sure they’d messed up, but being called out like this is just making it worse. At least the others are maybe finally starting to get it, too. Hopefully.

“He was threatening the guards,” Perfuma tries to explain. “We couldn’t just let him… he should have at least _tried_ to get along with everyone.”

“According to Juliet, he did,” the queen states.

“Well, he wasn’t taking his armor off like they told him to-” Bow regrets opening his mouth the second the Queen’s gaze turns on him. Why is he defending what he already knows was the wrong choice? “But I guess maybe they had a plan for dealing with that? We didn’t exactly check.”

“No, you did not.” The Queen releases Bow from her disapproving regard, returning her focus to the group as a whole. “Now, I understand that you are all curious about the state of the prisoner.”

“Sure, because I definitely care how that freak is doing,” Mermista drawls, doing a very bad job of acting unaffected by the Queen’s disapproval.

“Then you are welcome to leave,” Angella returns. “As for the rest of you, you may visit the prisoner, if that is your wish-”

“Then why bring up all that stuff about-!”

“Let me finish speaking, Glimmer. You may visit the prisoner, so long as I accompany you.”

“Ugh. Fine, mom. Let’s go in.”

“Glad as I am to have your permission to visit my own prisoner, I will remind you once more not to take that tone with me. I am still not pleased with-”

“Mom! I get it! You’re not happy! Can we just let it go for five minute so we can go make sure Hordak hasn’t climbed out a window or something?”

“You had certainly better ‘let it go’ while we are in the prisoner's cell. Honestly, Glimmer, you should know better by now than to act this way in front of our allies, let alone-”

If Bow was the kind of friend he wants to be, he’d try to help Glimmer with her mom, but honestly, it’s kind of hard not to tune it out. They could easily keep arguing about the same thing for the rest of the day, and nothing Bow says is going to change that. Besides, now that he’s here, with Hordak just on the other side of that door, he’d really like to see what kind of shape he’s in. He takes a hesitant step towards the door, only to find that Adora is already there. 

“Do you think… um…” Adora glances between Bow and the guards’ crossed staffs.

“I don’t know what to think,” Bow admits, not really sure what Adora is asking about but pretty sure his answer applies to whatever it is.

“What if he’s still… um… how we left him?”

At least Bow's not the only one bothered by that thought. Glimmer never saw the way Hordak curled up helplessly on the floor, ears pinned back as tight against his head as they could go, face drawn into a snarl, or heard the way he screamed when the armor came off, or saw the way he dropped when Juliet kneed him in the back, so she doesn’t know. And maybe the other three didn’t notice because they were too busy fighting, and anyway, it’s Hordak! There’s no way the five of them could hurt Hordak like that. Not that badly, any way, and without even meaning to. Right? So it’s not that he and his friends are all terrible people, even if Hordak is still right where they left him. “He’s probably not. He probably just wanted to wait until we left to put on that silly robe. He told us to leave, remember?”

“Yeah.” Adora nods. “He did. And… and he’s the bad guy, here, not us. It’s not like he’d help any of us if we were hurt, and it’s really not like we’d even want him to, and he didn't want our help, either, so I guess we just did what he asked us to. Right?”

Adora doesn’t look too sure about that. Bow isn’t too sure they're right, either, and he’s pretty sure that’s going to change to ‘pretty sure they’re wrong’ if they open that door to still find Hordak collapsed on the floor. Sure, he’s evil, but that doesn’t mean they should sink to his level. Also, it's not like they found Adora beaten up on the floor when they rescued her, or Entrapta, for that matter, so wouldn't that technically make the Princess Alliance worse than Hordak? Obviously not overall - trying to take over the world is still worse than trying to save it - but to find both prisoners they've tried to rescue in better shape than they've left Hordak...

“He’s probably fine,” Bow tries to state with confidence. He turns to the others. “Hey, guys? And your majesty,” he quickly corrects, realizing he’s just included the Queen in ‘you guys’. “It’s getting kind of late, so if we’re going to see Hordak today, maybe we should do it now?” Artificial light has replaced the sunlight that’s been fading from the windows, without anyone really noticing. The world outside the windows has gone nearly black, only moonlight filtering in. 

Queen Angella sighs, shaking her head at something Glimmer just said. “I suppose it has gotten rather late, hasn’t it? Very well. Let us go check on the state of our prisoner, and then I suggest you all retire to your rooms. We can discuss what needs to be done tomorrow after everyone has had some rest.”

“But mom!”

“Not now, Glimmer, please. None of us is at our best at the moment. Now, it is very important that we all present a united front in front of Hordak.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Mermista says.

“Yes, well, be that as it may, there is not reason not to do so from here forward. That means that any discussions anyone feels the need to have about any points of contention will need to wait until later. Can everyone agree to that?” Angella looks pointedly at Glimmer. 

“Yes, mom, I’ll behave.” Glimmer's tone probably isn’t exactly the one Angella was hoping for, but the Queen accepts it none the less.

“Good. Now, guards, open the doors. Carefully, please. The spells on the room should render our prisoner harmless, now that he has been captured, but it’s best not to take any chances with Hordak.”

The guards lower their staffs and open the door. The members of the princess alliance crowd into the entryway. The room is dark, barely lit up by the moonlight.

Bow's eyes are drawn the spot on the floor where they left Hordak, but he can tell even in the dark that no one is there. He bumps up against Adora, who nods back at him, relief showing on her face in the light from the hallway. Hordak must have moved at some point. He’s probably fine. So where is he?

Its really dark in here. Bow’s eyes dart around the room. Hordak probably isn’t about to jump out of the Shadows and kill them, but then, why wouldn’t he? Even if they hadn't just given him a pretty good reason to be mad at them, it’s Hordak! Jumping out of the darkness to kill them all is exactly the kind of thing he would do. Bow gulps. Why did coming in here seem like such a good idea, again? They could at least have waited until morning, so-

Glowing eyes appear from the darkness. Glowing red eyes above a glowing red mouth with viscous glowing red fangs. Someone gasps. For an endless minute, no one moves.

Then someone finally thinks to turn on the light. An irritated hiss comes from the glowing red mouth, which is only a little bit less terrifying in the light. Hordak. This is Hordak, scowling menacingly from the chair where Shadow Weaver sat only a few hours before, rigid posture showing how ridiculously tall he is, how he would loom over all of them if he bothered to stand up. He’s the picture of a dignified lord on his throne, looking down on the minions who have trespassed in his domain without permission, not worthy of even the effort of standing up. Yep, definitely still terrifying.

Until Bow looks down. The fluffy blue robe kind of ruins the image once Bow looks away from that face. Well, it doesn’t ruin it, exactly. It changes it, sure, and takes a lot away from the whole ‘terrifying monster’ thing, but it wouldn’t be right to call the image ruined. Not when Hordak in a fluffy blue robe is at the same time one of the cutest and most terrifying things Bow has ever seen. Why does he keep thinking Hordak is adorable? That’s got to be a problem. Also, Hordak is still glaring at them, which is probably also a problem.

The terrifying monster in the fluffy blue robe crosses his arms expectantly and growls, “what do you want?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update!
> 
> I should probably mention that much of the world building in this story, both stated and implied, has its origins in tumblr discussions, most of which did not start with me. It’s beyond my ability to properly credit everything beyond crediting the entire Entrapdak community, but I want to make it clear that the headcanons I’m using didn’t start with me.
> 
> Also, everyone’s opinions and perspectives are their own and do not necessarily reflect the author’s.

Hordak wakes abruptly at the sound of an opening door. Disoriented, his eyes dart frantically around the room, the stiffness of his muscles the only thing keeping him from flailing. Finally, his sight settles on a collection of backlit figures in the doorway.

One of the figures moves. Blinding light fills the room, aggravating the headache that Hordak had for the most part been successfully ignoring. He hisses. The figures flinch.

Eyes finally adjusting to the light, Hordak examines the intruders. Princesses. Of course it’s the Princesses. Can't those vicious little nuisances leave him in peace for one single night? He needs rest. How will he recover without rest? ~~How will he recover~~ ~~_with_ rest? His muscles have locked up, pain sparking across his nervous system, and something is wrong with his legs. They don’t feel right, they aren’t working right, something is wrong! What if they don’t heal? He doesn’t heal well, hasn’t in years. Every bit of functionality lost is lost forever, poorly replaced by machinery that never quite works right with the rest of his body. Entrapta’s armor came closest, but he has proven himself no longer worthy of that reprieve. What will he do if his legs fail to recover? Can he truly build himself something that can compensate for such a loss? Will his captors allow him to do so? Would Entrapta perhaps be willing to help if he sufficiently prostrated himself before her, proved to her that he understands the depths of his unworthiness? Perhaps she would be merciful enough to give him a chance at redemption? Although he has so far failed pathetically at the chance at redemption already given to him by Prime. Perhaps Entrapta would be appeased by something more attainable than the task his Brother set him to? She has already shown herself to be far more merciful and forgiving than Prime ever - _cease this blasphemy!_ Filthy unfaithful _defect!_ ~~

Enough of this. The intruders are watching him. The archer’s expression is... odd, whatever it is. Entirely unfamiliar. ~~Not entirely. Entrapta sometimes-~~ _Entirely_ unfamiliar.

“What do you want?” Hordak snarls, crossing his arms threateningly, not defensively - there is no need to defend himself from these pathetic fools ~~who ripped the armor from his body without even attempting to first disconnect it from his _nervous system._~~ Irrelevant. Also entirely emblematic of this primitive, savage, unenlightened world.

They cannot be allowed to know what damage they have done to him. He shudders to imagine the horrors such beings could devise from the slightest knowledge of even a fraction of the ways that his body has betrayed him. Has Entrapta told them? Surely she has not, or they would have taken advantage of it by now. That small mercy should not be wasted. He must not present himself as weak. He must appear to be in control - even if he is entirely certain that any attempt to get out of this chair would result in falling flat on his face. That’s fine. He has dealt with such weakness before. Much can be concealed behind a facade of dignity and unconcern. Give them no reason to insist he do anything of which he is incapable, and all will be well.

“We came to check whether you had been successfully settled into your new accommodations,” the Queen of Bright Moon explains, stepping past the group of frozen Princesses. Hordak resists the urge to rub his eyes. Of course the Queen has come to gloat. What a fool he was to hope the conversation in the throne room would be the end of it, knowing what he does of her arrogance. Still, he can manage. Maintaining dignity and civility is still the wisest course of action, so long as he lacks the ability to defend himself . His captors' lack of reciprocation does not change that.

“I assure you that I am quite well ‘settled’.” He is stationary, at least, with no intention of changing that fact. That’s nearly the same as being settled. He suppresses a wince at a spark of pain from his spinal port. Of all the people who should not be allowed to see him flinch, this Queen is at the top of the list.

Another voice interrupts their stare off. “Are you… um… are you comfortable?” The archer shrugs at the incredulous looks of his companions. “What?”

“We don’t care if the prisoner is comfortable,” the Princess of Bright Moon hisses in the archer’s ear, at a volume that might have concealed her words from less sensitive ears than Hordak’s. The two engage in some sort of communicative exchange through facial expressions. Hordak does not bother to try to interpret it.

“We’re better than that,” the archer insists, looking Hordak over as if he might see through this strange garment they gave him to the defective body underneath. He should not be able to do so. The garment is surprisingly large, clearly made for one of the taller inhabitants of this world. The fabric is of a type that Hordak has rarely encountered - too soft and delicate to provide much protection - except from the chill of the room, against which it provides more than adequate protection - but thick and opaque enough to easily conceal the many flaws beneath it. It does not fully cover his legs or his bare feet, but whatever new defect they have developed is not yet visible. There is nothing for the archer to see, yet still he looks.

“Yes, we are,” the Queen agrees, ready as ever to tout the goodness of herself and her people. At least this time the pretense might work in Hordak’s favor. Not that it protected him earlier, but perhaps he presented himself as too much of a threat to her power to maintain the pretense of kindness? He could fight try to fight them now, show his anger at such mistreatment, but what would it accomplish? He has no power here, no subordinates, no allies, no fleets of ships coming to ensure his victory. It is disturbingly reminiscent of his earliest days on this world, of those first encounters with what passed for leadership among these chaotic people, of their manipulations and competing factions all hiding behind a veil of false righteousness. It should have crushed one isolated clone with nothing but the memory of Prime’s light to guide him, one who had already been deemed too defective to even conquer beside his brothers under the wise guidance of Lord Prime, let alone to do it all alone. How he even survived those first few years can only be proof that Prime has not yet fully forsaken him, that forgiveness must still be possible - ~~but then why is he here, once again captured by magic and betrayed by the one person he thought he could-~~

Enough. The situation is as it is. Wishing that it might be otherwise is as pointless now as it ever was. The Etherians seem to be waiting for a response, so he should give them one - though what they have done that requires one, Hordak does not know. Still, he must do something, or risk aggravating them further. “Is there something you wish of me?”

“Hmm…” The queen hesitates, as unwilling to take decisive action as ever. “Information would be appreciated.”

“Information about what?” He has information aplenty, but very little of the kind that he would like to share with her. Entrapta is, _was,_ a much more receptive audience than this group is ever likely to be.

“Everything!” the small Princess of the Kingdom of Snows says, earning a raised brow from Hordak.

“Everything? I imagine that would take quite a while longer than any of you are inclined to spend listening.” 

“No, no, no,” the smallest Princess waves her hands. “Obviously not _everything_ everything. Everything about your secret evil plans!”

“Yeah, because he’s totally going to tell us all his secret evil plans just because we asked,” the Princess of Salineas drawls. “That’s what evil dictators do in real life.”

“Hey, you don’t know! Maybe he thinks his secret evil plans are really cool, so he wants to brag about them.”

“They wouldn’t exactly be secret if he did that, would they?” the Princess of Bright Moon says.

“No, wait, maybe Frosta has a point," the Princess of Salineas says with surprising enthusiasm. "In Mer-Mystery number 28, Secrets of-”

“Mer-Mystery? Um... aren’t those a bunch of mystery books?” the Princess of Plumeria asks.

“Ugh, yes, that’s why they’re called Mer- _Mysteries._ The point is-”

“But they’re all made up, right?”

“Technically, yeah, but-”

“So maybe that's not the very best way to figure out how real villains actually act. Maybe?”

“Well at least it’s a place to start. I don’t see anyone else coming up with any better ideas.”

“Well maybe we should-”

 _“I_ would suggest,” the Queen interrupts the utter nonsense that has taken over the room, “that you save this debate for a more appropriate time and place.”

Several princesses each begin to respond, but relent at the Queen's glare. The Princess of the Kingdom of Snows does not. “But we need to know what he’s planning!”

“I do not believe I have ever made any attempt to conceal my intentions,” Hordak interjects, hoping to head off any further arguments. None of this is doing anything for the state of his aching head, or the temper caused by his aching... well, _everything else._

“And what intentions are those?” The Queen asks, silencing any competing questions with another look.

“To conquer and bring order to Etheria.” And to bring this backwards world into Prime’s light, but few on this world have ever had much interest in hearing about that. He has never bothered to conceal it, would not, in fact, dare to try, but neither does he bother to mention it any longer to those who are yet too unenlightened to appreciate Prime’s glory. That hardly counts as having a ‘secret evil plan’.

“Yeah, but how?” The Princess of Bright Moon speaks past the Queen’s censure. The Queen does not object, suggesting that she also considers that a reasonable question, but why?

Hordak’s ears flick in confusion. “By… conquering it? And bringing order to what I have conquered? Surely you are familiar with how conquering works.” Even if they choose to ignore this world’s many historical conflicts, of which Hordak is well aware from the days when he interacted more directly with his soldiers, they must at least be familiar with how the Horde operates by now.

“Yeah, but…” the girl looks to the other alliance members for assistance. At this point, Hordak would also appreciate their assistance, so long as at least one of them figures out how to ask their question in a way that lets him actually answer it so they will leave. Maintaining this position is becoming increasingly difficult, and nonsensical questions can only serve as a distraction for so long.

The archer makes the next attempt. “I think what Glimmer is trying to say, is that how you’re acting right now doesn’t really fit with any 'taking over the world' plans.”

“Well, no. I hardly intended to be captured.”

“Yeah, but now that you are, what are you planning to do about it?” Adora asks.

“I-” he hasn’t the slightest idea. Are they truly under the impression that he has a plan? Avoiding having any more cybernetic implants torn out seems like a reasonable goal, as does trying not to collapse on the floor. Reducing the amount of pain he is currently in would also be preferred. Surely he isn't the only one who realizes how little he is in control of this situation.

“You will not be allowed to escape, whatever Shadow Weaver is planning,” the Queen insists, apropos of nothing, so far as Hordak can tell.

“Shadow Weaver betrayed me.” Have they not already established this? And even if they hadn’t, when would he have spoken with Shadow Weaver to develop this great plan they believe he has? “I imprisoned her, she escaped, and now she has helped you to imprison me. What about that suggests that our interests are still aligned?”

“Hmm, be that as it may, we will remain cautious.” The Queen seems to believe he will take that as a warning.

“I would suggest nothing else, where Shadow Weaver is concerned.” That statement is met with a remarkable amount of surprise. Were they truly under the impression that he trusted Shadow Weaver? Admittedly, at one time he had hoped that her aims were well enough aligned with his to not require constant scrutiny as his second in command, but she has long since proven herself entirely disloyal - and, again, she captured him and handed him over to Bright Moon! How does that not put the matter to rest?

“I still think you’re up to something,” the Princess of Bright Moon insists.

“Glimmer, enough,” the Queen chides, as if she weren't the source of most of this foolishness. “Now, it has been a long day for all of us.” Hordak wishes dearly to conceal more of his form beneath the strange material of his robe as judging eyes take in his condition, surely finding him wanting. “You still do not seem well, Hordak -” he is considerably less well than the last time she saw him, but she will not have the satisfaction of knowing it - “so I suggest you get some rest. We will return with more questions tomorrow.”

Ah, just the thing to help one sleep, anticipation of further incoherent interrogation. It almost seems worth insisting that they stay, just to try to get one clear question out of any of them and perhaps find a hint of what they actually want from him. But no, he is fading, feet on the edge between tingling and numb, blood rushing in his ears in a way that suggests that he won’t be conscious much longer. The strange glances he can see through his wavering vision suggest that his attempts at concealment are going very poorly. The Princess of Plumeria says something about herbal tea. The archer is focused on his feet. He wishes to suggest that perhaps Entrapta might help the interrogation go more smoothly for all involved, but suddenly finds himself without the breath to voice it. All of the intruders are babbling again in a roar that threatens to overwrite Hordak’s very mind, reminscent of the Hivemind except that it's _not supposed to be there,_ until finally the Queen ushers them all out of the room and there is blessed peace and darkness. It's only with the greatest effort of will that Hordak manages to fall sideways instead of forwards as consciousness leaves him.

Hordak wakes briefly at a commotion somewhere nearby, but cannot bring himself to fully awaken. There are more intruders, making more noise while doing something to his feet. Why his feet?! But his alarm at that realization is not sufficient to overcome having pushed himself so far beyond his limits. He should awaken, he knows he must, but by the time he is able to open his eyelids there is no one else in the room. He looks down at his feet, hoping the intruders have left them intact.

They have. In fact, his feet feel better than they did before, encased in a similar soft, warm material to that which composes his robe. Socks. Someone has put yellow, fluffy socks on his feet, with soft blue shoes to match his robe. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous… and yet, it is warm. So very warm that some of the tingling has already left his feet. Perhaps there was not quite so much nerve damage as he feared. Perhaps he was merely cold. He is still cold. But less so.

He should remove these ridiculous extra clothing items. The robe is an unfortunate necessity, for now, unless he wants to put his full body on display for all to see, but the socks and shoes conceal nothing. They serve no purpose. But they are warm.

The properties of this fabric are truly remarkable. None of the clothing items show any signs of the advanced engineering that Hordak would use to accomplish their same purpose, and yet, with every moment he can feel the cold leaving his lower extremities. As the cold lessens, his muscles release some of their tension, alleviating a small part of the pain that has been his constant companion in these past hours.

Perhaps he can allow himself this small indulgence? Entrapta would approve. She would think it quite sensible to retain clothing that keeps him warm and does not even irritate the more sensitive parts of his skin. She was always quick to point out how much more efficiently he functions when small needs such as these are met, and he surely does need all the help he can get with that. Surely not everything Entrapta taught him became false just because he ultimately drove her to betray him. Perhaps she will even appreciate evidence that he is continuing to do as she instructed, if she ever deigns to speak to him again. Scorning her concern for his well-being is part of how he drove her away in the first place, after all.

Very well. The ridiculous garments will stay, for now. It’s the only practical decision, really - and never mind the simultaneous relief of not needing to figure out how to remove them and not forcing himself to give up their warmth. There is no need for that. He can keep them.

Most of the tingling in his feet is gone, now, replaced by the softest warmth. It soothes his sore muscles, in turn relaxing overworked internal organs that have spent far too long trying to keep adrenaline rushing through his veins, trying to keep him awake and alert beyond even their normal, armor-supported capacity to do so. A subtle shift of some of the excessive number of cushions on this overly luxurious chair brings his back and neck into better alignment - at which point he realizes that his feet are on the chair with the rest of him, which means that someone put them on the chair while he slept - but he can’t find it in himself to be as disturbed by that as he ought to be. Perhaps it’s because he already knows that someone put socks and shoes on his feet while he slept. Perhaps it’s because he has become too used to Entrapta manipulating his body in any way she chose, and always finding himself pleased with the results. ~~Perhaps it was Entrapta herself who granted him such kindness.~~

Perhaps he is simply too tired to care. He is exhausted. He is also reasonably comfortable. He is alone in the room, although the intruders have proven he cannot count on staying that way. Still, two out of three conditions for restful sleep is often more than he can ask for, and again, he is warm. Sleeping now is at least as reasonable an indulgence as continuing to wear these ridiculous socks. Sleep will help him heal. Yes, he will allow himself to sleep. And so he does.


	7. Chapter 7

“I can’t believe we just gave Hordak fuzzy socks and slippers!”

“I can’t believe we just put socks and slippers on Hordak’s  _ feet!” _

Adora flops down on a chair in Glimmer’s room, a frown creasing her brow. “I can’t believe we just put socks and slippers on Hordak’s feet and he didn’t even move.” She’d honestly expected them all to lose their heads after giving into Bow’s insistence that they should do something about Hordak’s feet looking cold. First the plan was just to bring him some shoes and socks and ~~run away~~ _leave_ before he could do anything evil. Then it got even worse when all they could find in his size was a pair of slippers and some bright yellow socks guaranteed to make anyone’s feet look like fuzzy baby ducks.

All that was bad enough, but then Hordak wouldn’t wake up. He twitched and grumbled something, but his eyes never opened and he never acknowledged them. Glimmer thought they should just leave the stuff by his chair and get out of there, which would definitely have been the smart thing to do, but Bow worried that Hordak’s feet were looking a lot less blue than the other blue parts of him, and that maybe they shouldn’t be, and Hordak did actually look pretty miserable slumped over sideways in the chair, so in the end Bow and Glimmer worked together to get the socks on him and get his feet up on the couch while Adora stood guard as She-Ra. At least the other Princesses had already gone to bed and weren’t around to provide any ‘helpful’ commentary.

“Yeah.” Bow frowns. “I think… I really think we managed to hurt him when we took his armor off. Somehow.”

“But how?” Glimmer asks. “Seriously, how? It’s Hordak. What’d you do, hit him over the head with a giant rock? Or, I don’t know, a building? The guy’s practically invincible.”

“Look,” Bow says, “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you saw him before we all left earlier. He looked like he was about to pass out.” Glimmer still looks skeptical. “Oh, come on," Bow continues, "I can’t have been the only one who saw that. Adora?”

Adora sighs, not wanting to get stuck in an argument between her two best friends, but finding it kind of hard to disagree with Bow. “He did look pretty bad. And, I mean, Glimmer? We just put socks on his feet. And kind of tucked him in bed. And he didn’t wake up. That can’t be a good sign.”

“No, I… I mean, I know it’s not. Obviously that’s not normal. And, I mean, I guess-? But it’s Hordak!”

“I know!” Adora nods wildly, throwing up her hands. “I don’t understand it either. And why didn’t he fight us more, or argue, or try to manipulate us, or… or _something?_ We kind of did a really bad job of interrogating him, and he didn’t even try to take advantage of it, as far as I can tell. He mostly just seemed confused that we didn’t know how to interrogate people.”

“Hey,” Glimmer objects, “we do too know how to interrogate people!”

“Wellll…” Adora can’t help but object.

“Okay, fine, so maybe we didn’t show our best interrogation skills today. But we weren’t prepared! We weren’t prepared for any of this!”

“You can say that again,” Bow sighs. “Do you think he can tell we have no idea what we’re doing?”

“After today, who could miss it?” Adora asks. A small part of her, the part that was so proud to be promoted to force captain, to faithfully serve the Horde and the powerful and terrifying Lord Hordak, cringes at the thought of what he must think of her now. Not just a traitor, but a completely incompetent traitor. Sure, she’s powerful as She-Ra, but that obviously doesn’t mean anything when it comes to dealing with a defeated enemy. Well, a probably defeated enemy. He's still Hordak, after all. He could still be bluffing - although he’d have to be pretty dedicated to the bluff to let enemies put fuzzy yellow socks on his feet. But still, it’s Hordak! How could anything they do really hurt him? Especially when they didn’t even mean to!

“Maybe we weren’t being threatening enough?” Glimmer suggests. “I’m sure the Horde doesn’t have a lot of polite conversations with its prisoners.”

“Of course not,” Adora says. “I mean, probably. Right?"  Glimmer and Bow both shrug.

“You’re asking us?” Bow asks. “I mean, I’m sure you’re right, but I’d think you’d know better than we would.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” Adora frowns, thinking back to whenever she might have seen the Horde interrogating prisoners. There’s really not that much to look back on. “You guys know I was just a cadet until right before I met you, right? Most of what I did before I left was just training missions. Whatever prisoners the Horde might have had, we never had anything to do with them.”

“You didn’t?” Glimmer asks, surprised. “Not even out in the field? Wait, no, you can’t have gone on any missions like that, or you wouldn’t have been so shocked when the Horde attacked Thaymor. Was that really the first time you ever saw the Horde do anything evil?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, they had us fight Princesses in training, but those were just simulations, not anything like real Princesses. No one wants untrained cadets out in the field in a real battle. It’s inefficient! You have to at least prove yourself in training, first.”

“Huh,” Bow says. “I guess that makes sense, and I know you didn’t expect what the Horde did to Thaymor. It’s just kind of surprising.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone knows the Horde uses child soldiers,” Glimmer says.

“What, like cadets?”

“Yeah, the cadets. They kidnap orphans and make them fight for them.”

“No, that’s not - it’s not like that. I mean I guess I can’t say the kidnapping thing isn’t true, because Light Hope said Hordak kidnapped me when I was a baby, so maybe some of the other cadets were kidnapped, too, but no one’s sending kids out to fight. It’s all just training until you’re old enough to be able to handle yourself in the field.  _ So  _ much training; I can’t even tell you. I didn’t mind it too much, because I knew it was making me better, but Catra got so bored, sometimes… well, anyway.” The last thing she wants to do right now is talk about Catra.

“Okay, so the Horde never had you torture anyone.” Adora smiles gratefully at Bow's subject change. “But they did capture you, once.” Bow winces. “They didn’t… uh…”

“No.” Adora shakes her head. “They tied me up and gagged me, and Hordak was kind of a jerk, and Entrapta was kind of weird, but not more than usual, I don’t think, and of course they were trying to open a portal that would destroy the world, but no one actually tried to hurt me.” ~~Except for Catra.~~ Shut up.

“Yeah,” Bow acknowledges, “we really shouldn’t forget the whole almost destroying the world thing. That _kind_ of cancels out being a really cooperative prisoner.”

“I’m not sure they knew, though,” Adora says thoughtfully, trying to remember the actual conversation past the panic of being tied to a pillar while the world ended. “At least, Entrapta didn’t, and it almost seemed like she might be starting to listen to me. Maybe. It’s hard to tell with her.”

“Where was she, anyway?” Glimmer asks. “Do you know? I didn’t see her in the fight.”

Adora shakes her head. “I don't know. She ran off to check something and never came back. Catra said something about her… oh!” she gasps, remembering a conversation that barely registered at the time through her panic but is taking on a whole lot more meaning now. “It was something about Entrapta betraying them! Maybe Entrapta did believe me, at least enough to check for herself! Maybe she figured out I was telling the truth!”

“Oh,” Bow says solemnly.

“Oh?” Glimmer asks. “What ‘oh’? This is good, right? If Entrapta betrayed them to stop the portal from opening, then that means Entrapta isn’t on their side anymore, right?”

“Yeah,” Bow says, “and the only reason we know that is because Catra said it.”

“What, you think she was lying?” Glimmer asks. “Why would she make that up?”

“Catra would definitely lie,” Adora says, considering, “but I don’t know why she’d lie to Hordak about Entrapta. It’d make a lot more sense for Entrapta to decide not to destroy the world than for Catra to pretend Entrapta decided not to destroy the world.”

“Right,” Bow says, still uncomfortably serious. Too serious to just be talking about someone failing to destroy the world, or a friend coming back to their side. “So we think Entrapta decided not to open the portal that Hordak and Catra wanted to open. And  _ Catra _ found out about it. Then they opened the portal, and I sure didn’t see Entrapta around anywhere trying to stop them.”

“So, what, you think Catra captured her? Tied her up, somewhere?” It would really stink if Entrapta is locked up in some closet in the Fright Zone, waiting for someone to rescue her,  _ again _ , because she decided to do the right thing.

“That’s… one possibility,” Bow says carefully.

“What are the others?” Maybe Bow has a better suggestion. Bow’s great at coming up with ideas that other people don’t think of. He’s smart that way. Surely he can think of another explanation for Entrapta disappearing right after Catra found out she betrayed them.

“Well… look. I don’t know Catra that well. You know her a lot better than I do, Adora.”

“Yeah, but I can’t think of anything else she could have done to keep Entrapta from trying to stop them. It’s kind of hard to keep Entrapta from going wherever she wants to go.”

“Yeah. And maybe she did just tie her up. But... I think we’ve all seen how well that _doesn’t_ work with Entrapta. Catra’s probably seen it too. So I guess what I’m asking, is, um… how far do you think Catra would go to get Entrapta out of the way?”

“What do you mean?” What more could she have done than tie Entrapta up, and maybe lock her away somewhere where she couldn’t get out, somehow - except that would be so hard to do, and patience isn’t Catra’s strong suit at the best of times, and she was so determined to get that portal open, for some reason, maybe even more than Hordak was. If Entrapta tried to stop her…

“No.” Adora shakes her head frantically, tears burning in her eyes. “No, she wouldn’t.”

“Okay,” Bow agrees calmly. “If you say she wouldn’t, I believe you. Like I said, you know her best, so-”

“She wouldn’t,” Adora whispers again. Catra wouldn’t. But… not that long ago she thought Catra wouldn’t stay with the Horde once she knew what they did. A few days ago she never would have thought Catra would try to destroy the world. Maybe Catra didn’t know the portal would end the world. Maybe she didn’t know why Entrapta decided to betray them. But she knew about the Horde, and she knew why Adora left, and she decided to stay anyway. Who’s Adora to say what Catra would or wouldn’t do? If she thought Entrapta betrayed her, and Entrapta tried to get in her way... “She…”

“I can’t believe we keep letting this happen,” Glimmer  states forlornly . “I mean, Entrapta made her choices, but that would make this the  _ second time _ we left her to…”

“No wonder she didn’t want to come back with us,” Bow says. “We’re kind of terrible friends.”

“Not…  _ terrible _ ,” Glimmer argues. “We didn’t know Catra was going to… and maybe she didn’t! We’re just guessing. We don’t even know that Entrapta tried to stop them. Maybe she got distracted by some other piece of technology and ran off before she finished helping them. Catra would consider that a betrayal, wouldn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Adora says, “I guess she would.” It would be really nice to believe that; to believe that Entrapta is happily causing chaos somewhere in the depths of the Fright Zone where Catra can’t find her, and Catra never even got a chance to… “Maybe we should go look for her again? Entrapta, I mean. Once we figure out what to do with Hordak.”

“Hmm, that’s not a bad idea.” Bow tries for a smile. It doesn't really work. “I’m not sure how we’d get in there this time, but we’ve done it before, and maybe without Hordak around it would be easier.”

“Or maybe they’ve increased security so much that they’ll take us down the second we arrive,” Glimmer counters.

“Yeah, that’s definitely possible,” Bow admits.

“And I’d hate to do another rescue mission just to have Entrapta say she’s perfectly happy where she is.”

_Or to have her not be anywhere at all,_ Adora thinks but does not say. It wouldn’t be helpful.

“Knowing Entrapta, there really is a pretty good chance she’s gotten away on her own by now,” Bow says, which is probably true. Catra _probably_ wouldn’t kill her, _~~wouldn't she?~~_ , and if she tied her up and then went to tell Hordak, Entrapta would definitely have escaped. There really is a pretty good chance she’s happily reconfiguring the Fright Zone without anyone around to stop her. Probably. A ~~nd if she’s not, it's too late to do anything about it~~.

“For now, we should probably focus on Hordak,” Glimmer states. “Maybe we can even ask if he knows where Entrapta is.”

“It’s sure better than anything we came up with today,” Bow agrees. “Although at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if we managed to mess up asking ‘what happened to Entrapta’ somehow.”

“Come on, how hard can it be?” Glimmer asks. “Sure, we were off our game today-”

“So you think we’re going to be ‘on our game’ tomorrow?” Adora asks. That seems a  _ little _ bit too optimistic to her.

“Yes,” Glimmer states. “We weren’t prepared, and the whole thing started out all dark and creepy, and  _ no one _ could be ready to deal with Hordak wearing a bathrobe. Now we know what to expect, so we’ll be ready.”

***

“I can’t  _ believe _ this!” Catra shouts, kicking away one of the many piles of debris scattered around the portal machine that  _ Adora _ broke because  _ Adora _ couldn’t stand to let Catra have one single thing she wanted, not even a stupid portal that probably wasn’t even going to do anything to her stupid _sword_.

“Maybe we should let someone else take a look at it?” Scorpia suggests, ducking when Catra whirls around to snarl at her.

“What’s the point?” Catra hisses. “No one’s going to be able to fix it. Hordak’s gone and Entrapta is - Adora ruins  _ everything!” _

“Okay, yeah, that is definitely a problem,” Scorpia agrees, nodding earnestly. Catra rolls her eyes at the earnestness. “It’s a problem for the portal, and it also seems like maybe Lord Hordak being kidnapped is also a problem all by itself? A little bit?”

Not this again. “ _ Yes, _ obviously Hordak getting… ‘kidnapped’,” ugh, that’s a weird thing to say, “is a problem. We’ve already talked about that. A lot.” Every single Force Captain had something to say about it, except for Scorpia. Octavia even implied that it was Catra’s fault for capturing Adora and giving the Princesses a reason to invade in the first place. Grizzlor disagreed, saying something about a measured approach keeping them at a stalemate for years and how they never would have gotten to where they were without taking some initiative, which started an argument between the older Force Captains that was still going strong more than an hour later when Catra finally managed to sneak away. 

“I think they’ve forgotten that they’re mad at you, by now,” Scorpia offers. She was still trying to keep up with the argument when Catra left to try to find anything salvageable in the portal machine, but she joined Catra not long after.

“Great, because they shouldn’t be. All I did is what anyone should have done. What did they expect me to do, just let her go so the Princesses didn’t get mad at us? Great way to fight a war.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what Grizzlor said when Octavia was going to chase after you for running away.” They saw her leave? Crap. “Then Octavia said something about his dad, and he got pretty mad, and then everyone started taking sides and I thought I should come check on you, and I’m _pretty_ sure we're not the only Force Captains left after all that, but, uh, not 100% sure.”

“Great, this is just _great_. Adora got away, she kidnapped Hordak, Shadow Weaver’s helping her, as always, the portal machine's broken, and now all of the Force Captains are trying to kill each other. Any other problems I should know about?”

“Um, well…” Scorpia rubs the back of her neck.

“What?” Catra snaps. 

“Well, since we’re talking about problems, and maybe about people doing things that they didn’t _quite_ think through all the way because they were upset and maybe now they want to fix it but maybe they don’t know how, but that they maybe probably should do something about now that-”

“That has nothing to do with anything. What are you even talking about? Just spit it out.”

_ “IjustthinkmaybesendingEntraptatoBeastIslandisoneofourproblemsandmaybeitwasabadideaandweshouldfixit!” _ Scorpia covers her head with her claws.

“What was that?” Catra asks, a hint of threat in her voice.

“I just… think…” Catra smiles, showing a hint of teeth. Scorpia shuts up. Finally.

“That’s what I thought.” Catra turns away from the destroyed machine. It’s useless now, anyway. “Now here’s what  _ I _ think. I think the Horde has a lot of problems right now.”

“I think you’re definitely right about that,” Scorpia agrees, nodding earnestly again.  _ So earnest! Why?! _ Ugh, it doesn’t matter, as long as she keeps doing what she’s told.

“Of course I’m right,” Catra scoffs. “The Horde is in chaos without someone in charge. There’s no way we’ll ever be able to conquer Etheria with everyone fighting with each other.”

“Right.” Scorpia nods again. “We need a leader.”

“We do.” For about five seconds, Catra entertains the idea of being that leader. Wouldn’t that just show Adora, and Shadow Weaver? They’d see once and for all that she’s better than them,  that she doesn’t need them .

But no, that’s not going to work, at least not yet. The Force Captains don’t have any reason to follow her, not when her only accomplishments so far have been to spend a short time as Hordak’s second in command, get sent to the Crimson Waste, capture Adora, and indirectly get Hordak kidnapped. But what if she could fix all that?

“Come on, Scorpia.” Putting all doubt aside, Catra stalks confidently to the broken door of the sanctum.

“Coming!” Scorpia declares, jogging to catch up. “Uh, where are we going?”

Catra will never admit it for as long as she lives, but doing what she needs to do next feels a little bit easier with Scorpia by her side. “To talk to the Force Captains. I have a plan.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) A reminder: This story has no objective narrator. All views expressed by characters are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the author.  
> 2) Ideas from tumblr discussions are used extensively throughout this story. I don’t know how to properly credit them all, but for this chapter @cruelfeline is the source of inspiration for references to the origin of the Horde and @bishonenrockmysocks is the inspiration for the characterization of the Horde Commanders.

Commander Cobalt watches silently as Catra strides into the entrance of the conference room, Scorpia trailing behind. Confidence faltering, Catra stops in the doorway, reluctant to approach the arguing Commanders.

Most of the Force Captains are gone by now, having left as soon as they could find an opening to slip away, reluctant to risk getting involved in an argument between their commanding officers. Grizzlor and Octavia are still going at it - Octavia still insisting that the ‘little twerp’ should pay for bringing Princesses to their door, Grizzlor arguing that it’s about time someone actually took some action, and that the kid can’t exactly be blamed for not being able to take on an army of Princesses when the rest of them haven't done much better. If he felt like getting involved in the argument, Cobalt might suggest that the problem isn’t so much that Catra took action against the Princesses as that she did it without any contingency planning or sharing of key information with her fellow soldiers. Couldn’t she have at least given security a heads up that the Princesses hadn’t even been disabled in Adora’s capture and were free to escape and regroup back in Brightmoon? Typical of the kind of impulsiveness and hyper-individualism that Catra always showed in training, which is why Cobalt never would have recommended her for graduation without gaining a whole lot more maturity, let alone promotion. He didn’t exactly get a say in that, though, now did he? No, it was all some nonsense between Hordak and Shadow Weaver. Not that Hordak can’t decide to promote anyone he wants, but he never makes his best decisions once Shadow Weaver gets involved. But what’s done is done, and Octavia’s latest suggestion of dropping Catra into an incinerator isn’t going to solve anything.

“You need something, kid?” Grizzlor calls, casually restraining Octavia with a hand on her shoulder before she can lunge at the frozen young soldier.

Catra startles, gaping at the Commander before wiping it away with a smirk. Cobalt shakes his head. Come on, kid, show some humility, or respect, or situational awareness, or _something._ What twisted little maladaptive thought process is making smirking seem like a good idea right now? “I’m here to solve your little lack of leadership problem.” _And_ she makes it worse.

“You?!” Octavia hisses. “Do _not_ tell me you think you’re still in charge. This whole situation is your fault!”

Catra yawns. Oh, kid, you just don’t get how this works, do you? “Yeah, yeah, we’ve been over this. You’re mad that the Princesses invaded after I got the portal to work. Who cares?”

 _“YOU’RE_ GOING TO CARE YOU LITTLE-”

“Octavia.” Grizzlor doesn’t let go of Octavia’s shoulder. Most people would lose a hand for that, but the three of them go back far enough that they can do things like that to each other. “Hear the kid out. If she says something stupid, we can deal with it after she says it.”

“What’s there to hear out? She got Lord Hordak captured by the Princesses. Lord Hordak is in _Brightmoon_ right now thanks to this irresponsible little brat.”

“Me?” Catra asks. “ _I_ got Hordak-” Scorpia anxiously clears her throat, _“-Lord_ Hordak captured by the Princesses? How do you figure that? It was Entrapta who let them in.” Scorpia winces at that. Interesting. Something to look into later. "All I did was make the Horde stop sitting on its collective butt and actually _do_ something for once.”

”Which is why we currently have a destroyed Sanctum, no Hordak, and an army of Princesses working with Shadow Weaver who appear to have access to the entire Fright Zone,” Cobalt can’t help but point out. Catra’s smarter than this, she really is, so why can’t she just think things through every once in a while?

“Yeah, that could’ve gone better,” Catra admits, shrugging, “but what was I supposed to do, just pass up the opportunity to capture Adora and her stupid sword? Hordak sure didn’t have a problem with it.”

No, of course Hordak didn’t. Hordak’s understanding of politics and military strategy is better than it was back in the early days of the rebellion, but it’s still not great. Whatever skills he does have all fly out the window once he gets focused on a project, along with everything else that might require his attention. That’s especially true when it involves his main project - which was apparently opening a portal? That’s more than Cobalt knew about it until a few hours ago, but he didn’t need to know what it was to know that Hordak was obsessed with it. No, Hordak wasn’t going to say no to a way to make that decades-long obsession finally work. He can’t be counted on to think of all of the little things that go into keeping everything outside of his projects running smoothly at the best of times, so why would he now? That’s Cobalt’s job - which he failed at miserably. Only part of that can be blamed on Catra's failure to share critical information.

“Look,” Catra continues, “I know things didn’t exactly go according to plan. I’m not saying they did, and I’m not saying I’m in charge. And I know we can’t have Hordak,” Scorpia frantically shakes her head, apparently determined to help Catra get through this without losing her own head, _“-Lord_ Hordak captured by Brightmoon. Which is why I’m offering to go get him back.”

“And do you have a _plan_ for how to get him back, cade- Catra?” Cobalt asks, finding it hard to resist addressing her like a cadet when she continues to act like one. Actually, no, most cadets would at least bother to be respectful when speaking to a room full of the oldest Commanders left in the Horde. Catra’s just acting like… well, Catra.

“Of course I have a plan. I’m going to break into Brightmoon and get him back.”

“THAT’S NOT EVEN A PLAN!” Octavia roars.

Sharing a long-suffering look with Cobalt, Grizzlor slides his companionably restraining hand over to more of a companionably restraining arm around Octavia’s shoulders, catching enough of her limbs that she’d have to push him away to go after Catra. Octavia is a great friend and a brilliant commander, responsible for an impressive number of the Horde’s victories, but she’s never been great at controlling her temper. Catra didn’t actually mean to get Hordak captured by the Princess Alliance, so she does not, in fact, deserve to be tossed into an incinerator. Not that Octavia would actually do it, _probably,_ but it still seems best to keep some distance between them for now.

Catra laughs. Cobalt sighs. Come on, kid! At least act like you care. “Of course that’s not my whole plan. What, do you think I’m stupid?” Well, not until recently… “Obviously I can’t just walk right into Brightmoon with all the Princesses there.”

“We can’t send troops in to help you, if that’s what you're thinking,” Cobalt informs her. “We’d never get that many people through the Whispering Woods.”

“Of course not,” Catra scoffs. “I don’t need help in Brightmoon.”

“So your plan actually is to just invade Brightmoon by yourself?” Grizzlor asks. “Sorry, kid, but that’s not going to work.”

“I’m not a kid!” Says the kid who’s still young enough to protest that she’s not a kid. _Why_ did Hordak think she was ready to be promoted? _Why?!_

Grizzlor nods. “Fine, kid. Catra. Whatever you want to go by, that’s not gonna work. Listen, we’re all for getting Hordak back, and you’re welcome to help, but you’ve gotta give us something better than that to work with. Do you have a plan or not?”

Catra scoffs. “Of course I have a plan. I’ll tell you if you’ll just let me finish.”

“Fine. Talk.” Octavia growls, looking a little less murderous, but not enough for Grizzlor to let her go.

“I was _trying,_ but you keep-”

“Asking very reasonable questions that Catra would be happy to answer!” Scorpia chimes in at the top of her lungs, drowning out whatever Catra was going to say and ignoring her glare. Cobalt shakes his head. Of all the people Scorpia could have picked for a friend, why did it have to be Catra? It’s probably best to keep a better eye on those two. Scorpia is too trusting and accommodating by half, which Catra is almost guaranteed to take advantage of. Grizzlor was so sure that making friends her own age would be good for Scorpia, help her grow into the confident young woman she could never quite manage to be under the shadow of her family, even if she didn’t know much about them. Maybe that’s true, but this one is just trouble. Things started looking better for a while once Entrapta showed up, even if Scorpia didn’t get quite as much friend time as she’d like once Entrapta got busy with Hordak, but… well. Catra told them what Entrapta did. As shocking as it was to hear about her betrayal, especially with how close she and Hordak were getting, it’s sadly believable that a Princess would throw all of that away to rejoin the other Princesses. So much for that friendship.

“I. Have. A. Plan.” Catra bites out, turning away from Scorpia and ignoring her hurt look. If the kid wasn’t already in enough trouble…

“Then. What. Is. Your. Plan?” Octavia mocks, brushing off Grizzlor’s arm but keeping her distance from Catra.

“My plan, if you’ll let me finish it, is for the Horde to step up its attacks, draw the Princesses out of Brightmoon, and then when they’re out of the way, I go in for Hordak.”

“You really think you can invade Brightmoon all by yourself, kid?” Grizzlor asks. “Even with the Princesses gone, it’ll still be hard to get in there, let alone to get out with a prisoner. And keep in mind that we don’t know what kind of condition he’ll be in when you find him.” He shares a dark look with Cobalt. They all know full well the kind of damage a Runestone wielder can do to a person. Everyone from those days does.

“Yeah, yeah.” Catra waves him off. “I can get in there. You get the Princesses out of my way, and they’ll never even know I was there until they come back and see Hordak’s gone.”

Octavia scowls. “That’s still not much of a plan.”

“Might be the best we can get, though,” Grizzlor admits. “Good work, kid.”

Catra blinks. “Wait, really?” Then she pastes on a look of smug confidence. “I mean, yeah, of course my plan’s good. Why wouldn’t it be?” Sure, kid, pretend you’re not shocked by a genuine compliment from an authority figure. Damn Shadow Weaver.

“You’re sure you can do this?” Cobalt thinks he can be forgiven for being a little bit skeptical, though, even if Grizzlor is already convinced. Catra’s got some skills, and can put them to pretty good use when she puts her mind to it, but she has a history of not being completely focused on the mission.

“You think I can’t?”

“I think you’re capable of it. I think you’re capable of quite a bit.” Again that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shock. And a hint of pride. Maybe there’s something for a commander to work with in that fuzzy head after all, now that Shadow Weaver’s out of the picture. “The question is whether you can stick to the mission and not get distracted by personal problems that don’t belong on the battlefield.”

“Personal problems? I do _not_ get distracted by personal problems.”

“You do. I’ve seen it ever since you entered basic training. I can’t even count the number of missions where your team was depending on you and you decided you had something better to do.”

“In training! Not on a real mission.” Catra looks away. “Not when it matters.”

“Training missions do matter. Sending an untrained team into battle is a recipe for disaster.” As the Horde learned all too well in the early days of the Scorpioni rebellion, and again when some interfering neighbors decided a few random desert-dwellers rising up against the monarchy might be a threat to their own power, too. There’s nothing quite like a surprise battle with an extra Runestone wielder to drill into a soldier’s head the importance of training for every eventuality.

“Believe me, I’m trained,” Catra drawls, finally approaching the Commanders, “Shadow Weaver took care of that.” Because Shadow Weaver is just the person to teach kids about teamwork and working for a higher cause. The number of times Cobalt tried to get Hordak to see how Shadow Weaver was ruining those kids… but he just didn’t get it. Hordak has always had trouble understanding kids. There was a time when he didn't even seem all that sure what they were. He gets that they’re small underdeveloped people who can grow into soldiers, but not much more than that. He doesn’t mean them any harm - one of the things that really cemented Cobalt’s loyalty to Hordak, beyond the practical things like his ability to piece together incredible technology from nothing and the sheer usefulness of having someone that intimidating at the head of the Horde, was his absolute disgust at learning how orphans were treated under the Scorpioni - or rather, how they _weren’t_ treated, as in nothing was done for them, leaving the ones who couldn’t fend for themselves to waste away in the streets. ‘Inefficient’, Hordak called it, and ‘wasteful’, to cast aside undeveloped beings before even giving them the chance to prove their worth, but the fury he showed that day went far beyond his usual irritation at inefficiency.

Many of those sick, starving kids are valued, respected members of the Horde now, whether in the military or in whatever support role best suits their skills, despite the fact that the Horde had hardly any resources at the time and it probably would have been more ‘efficient’ to spend them on people who could provide some more immediate repayment. So no, it’s not that Hordak ever tried to hurt any of the cadets… but he’s also never seemed to really understand the kinds of things that can hurt a person. It’s honestly one of Cobalt’s biggest ongoing sources of frustration.

“Look,” Catra continues, “my part isn’t even going to need any teamwork, and if you do your jobs right then the Princesses won’t even be there. I just need to get in, get Hordak, and get out. How hard can it be?”

Grizzlor claps Catra on the shoulder, chuckling when she hisses. “That’s the spirit, kid! Come on, Cobalt, the kid’s right.”

“Catra,” Catra says through gritted teeth. “My name is Catra.”

“I know your name, kid. So, Catra, I’d say you’ve got just the skills we need for this mission. If you think you’re up for it, then I, for one, support you.”

“You do?” Catra quickly replaces her surprise with a smirk. Oh, kid, come on. You’re just sabotaging yourself. “Of course you do. Of course I do. Breaking into Brightmoon is nothing.”

“Hmm.” Octavia walks up to Catra, sizing her up. “I’m not convinced.”

“Octavia…” Grizzlor warns. 

“What? I’m not. But…” Octavia deflates. “We might not have any better options. I don’t think any of us are going to get away with breaking in, and we can’t leave the Horde with so much of the power structure already missing. So you might be our best chance. We can’t leave Hordak in Brightmoon. That’s not an option. You get that, right, kid?”

Catra bristles. “Of course I get that. The Horde can’t just not have a leader.”

“Yeah, that’s it. The Horde needs its leader back.” Cobalt and Grizzlor share a glance at the slight waver in Octavia’s voice. They’re probably the only ones who notice it, but it’s concerning… not least because if Cobalt thinks about it too much, his voice might do the same thing. Hordak is in Brightmoon. What’s happening to him there? As much as he respects and admires the man, his ability to take care of himself is practically non-existent - probably at about the same level as his understanding of how kids work. He can barely remember to eat on his own, and his people skills consist pretty much of yelling and growling at people who get in the way of his research, so how is he supposed to survive the manipulative, underhanded tactics of the Brightmoon monarchy?

“Great,” Catra says. “You guys take care of the distraction, I’ll take care of breaking into Brightmoon. Scorpia, with me. We’ve got some planning to do.”

“You can do it, kid!” Grizzlor encourages. Well, if he’s on board, and Octavia doesn’t have any more objections... 

“We’ll need to coordinate the timing perfectly. As long as you can manage to-”

“If your plan relies on _her_ to demonstrate any sort of subtlety or modicum of ability to follow orders or collaborate, the Horde is even in worse shape than I thought.” Shadows coalesce into an extremely unwelcome form.

***

Defective body failing, collapsing in front of an enemy’s scorn - _“I’m the one who’s gonna make sure you fail.”_ Failure, he can’t fail, can’t, can’t reveal this weakness can’t fail can’t… “Get. It. To. _Work.”_ Entrapta pulls back in shock… fear? Does he frighten her? This impure world is meant to be frightened, must quail before the promise of his/ _Prime’s/_ his/ _Prime’s/_ his wrath, but not her not Entrapta not her…

Fear morphs into disgust - she turns away, no longer condescending to look upon his pathetically failing form - failed failed failed - failed to call Prime failed to keep Entrapta failed to be worthy _failed-_

Trapped in the enemy’s stronghold, Entrapta watching dispassionately as his armor-her gift-his _life_ is ripped from him. He’s not worth even her anger, only indifference, has proven himself entirely unworthy - “Please, I did not mean it, I will…” She walks away without a word, no chance to explain. He tries to follow but pain rips through his broken body - can’t walk can’t crawl can’t throw himself at her feet to beg for mercy beg for forgiveness beg her to come back to let him fix it let him prove he can be worthy isn’t defective isn’t a failure does not need to be cast aside - 

She caresses his face, holds him close/so dearly… wraps her hair around him... all will be well... brushes the back of his neck, his port - enters him unmakes him remakes him into beloved valued _clean pure worthy_ erases his imperfections so he can be - _“Imperfections are beautiful!”_ Her imperfections are beautiful, not his, his are defective failed worthless hideous filthy impure unclean useless - his imperfections _drove her_ **_away._ ** “Entrapta, please, I…” She walks away won’t let him fix it too late it’s too late she hates him hates him hates him - left with the Princesses helped them destroy him - destroyed him left him like this - worthless defective weak helpless at their nonexistent mercy-

A pop jolts Hordak awake. Chittering voices jabber over him, coming from looming shapes surrounding him with sight and scorn and judgement. He snarls, sending them scrambling back away to where they can’t touch him. He tries to lunge after them, make them pay, make them _leave_ , but agony shoots up his spine. He collapses back to the chair that has become his cage, restraining a whimper as spasming muscles protest the sudden movement. They’re still there, still watching him, silent now, waiting for proof of the weakness that will let them control him destroy him discard him. They have no right, the pathetic creatures - lost from the light, lost from everything clean, come to destroy him in the night. They will _leave!_ Gathering every remaining ounce of strength, he raises his head enough to roar _“GET OUT!”_ with sufficient menace that the intruders vanish before he collapses again. Grumbling about irritating Princesses, he shakes off the last clinging vestiges of the nightmare and sets about arranging himself in a more dignified manner.

***

“So… that could have gone better,” Bow says as the sparkles from Glimmer’s teleport fade.

“I don’t know,” Adora tries, “at least we didn’t… um… hm.”

“You’ve got nothing, do you?” Glimmer asks wryly.

Adora shrugs. “Well, I tried. And we tried! I guess talking to Hordak privately isn’t going to be as easy as we thought.” It seemed like a good idea at the time. Bow thought that maybe having everyone there had put Hordak on edge the last time they tried talking to him, and Glimmer wanted to try without her mom judging everything word she said, so going in just after sunrise seemed like a great way to talk to him before everyone else woke up with the same idea. “Looks like he’s not a morning person.”

“You can say that again,” Bow sighs. “I guess we’ll have to wait for a more formal interrogation later.”

“Yeah,” Adora admits, but Glimmer looks thoughtful.

“Formal, huh? How about a different kind of formal?”

“What do you mean?” Visions of Hordak dressed up for Princess Prom flit through Adora’s head.

“I mean… this isn’t just an interrogation, right? It’s also diplomacy.”

“Is breaking someone’s armor while they're wearing it and locking them up usually considered part of diplomacy?” Adora asks, trying to keep an open mind but having a hard time containing her skepticism. On one hand, that would fit in perfectly with some of the Horde’s stories about Princesses. But the Alliance is nothing like the Horde said it was, so surely that’s not how diplomacy works here. Right?

Glimmer shakes her head. “No, obviously he’s still a dangerous prisoner, so we have to keep him safely contained. But he’s also the ruler of the Fright Zone, right?”

“Um… yes?” Wherever Glimmer is going with this isn’t getting any clearer.

“So that makes him kind of like royalty, doesn't it? In a sense, anyway. So maybe we should try approaching him that way.”

“What, have a big, formal dinner and a bunch of ceremonies and a dance party?” Bow asks.

Glimmer shakes her head. “No, no, no, my mom would never go for that, and he’s still a dangerous prisoner, foreign dignitary or not. But how about breakfast?”

Bow and Adora share looks of confusion as Glimmer heads off towards the kitchens.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are very much appreciated. Or come talk to me on tumblr at https://rainoverthemountains.tumblr.com/


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